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MASHALLAH! 



A. FLiaST INTO EGYPT, 



BY 



Charles Warren Stoddard. 




STODDARD. 



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APPLETONS' NEW HANDY-VOLUME SERIES. 



MA8HALLAH! 



A FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. 



BY 



CHARLES WARREN STODDARD, 

AUTHOR OP " SOUTH SEA IDYLS," ETC. 




i%j%i£ 1 ' 



&> 






I 



NEW YOKE: 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

1, 3, and 5 BOND STKEET. 

1881. 









^8 6 




COPYRIGHT BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. 

1880. 



TO 



MME. LA BAROSHSTE A d'E- 



NOTE. 



The following letters were written in the 
spring of 1876. Since that time the Egyptian 
Government has been severely shaken ; but, like 
those sand-storms that threaten annihilation, when 
they have passed over, the character of the coun- 
try and the people is found unchanged. 

For this reason I trust my notes of travel will 
not be deemed out of date. 

c. w. s. 

San Francisco, Cal. 



CONTENTS, 





page 


I. — Parisian Days . 


. 9 


II. — Paris by Gaslight. 


19 


III. — From the Latin Quarter 


. 25 


IV. — Marseilles .... 


33 


V. — Malta .... 


. 40 


VI. — Alexandria .... 


51* 


VII.— The Delta 


. 68 


VIII. — Grand Cairo 


75 


IX. — The Baths and the Bazaars . 


. 87 


X. — Mosques and Kiosques 


98 


XI. — The Pyramids 


. 109 


XII. — Memphis and Sakkarah 


119 


XIII. — On the Nile 


. 128 


XIV. — An Arabian Night . 


138 


XV. — Egyptian Village Life . 


. 151 


XVI. — Temples and Tombs . 


161 


XVII.— Thebes .... 


. 172 


XVIII. — Fleshpots .... 


183 


XIX.— Phil^ .... 


. 191 


XX. — Down the Stream . 


204 


XXI. — The Moolid of the Prophet 


. 217 



MASHALLAH! 

A FLIGHT INTO EGYPT. 



I. 

PARISIAN DAYS. 

Hotel du Mont Blanc, Rue de Seine, Paris. 
A light fall very of filmy snow lies like down in 
the two courts of the Grand Hotel du Mont Blanc. 
There is something laughable in the grandeur of 
this dingy old caravansary in the heart of the 
Latin Quarter- — it is so lacking in every element 
suggested by the name. It is true we have snow 
in the two courts, and the chambers, spite of the 
elegantly small French grates sunk away back 
in the chimney, are as cold as the crown of the 
great father of mountains ; but, beyond this, I 
don't see the appropriateness of the title as applied 
to our hotel. Your French fires are too polite to 
roar, and too expensive to make up in quantity 
what they lack in quality — at least on this side of 
the river. 



10 MASHALLAH ! 

We are all Bohemians together as far as your 
eyes can count the chimney-tops ; we glory in be- 
ing ill paid for our works of undoubted genius ; in 
the sweat of our faces we do not, as a general thing, 
eat bread, though it is always at hand, done up in 
crisp rolls as big around as your arm and full seven 
feet long; we prefer taking the light, nameless 
dishes that are served us over the way by the 
faithful and obliging Theodore, and where we 
can, if we choose, leave "a promise to pay" 
on the proprietor's book, where it hangs till 
American stocks go up in the market. Auto- 
graphs are worth something in the Latin Quar- 
ter, as almost any one of us can prove to you 
toward the end of the month. Students drift 
naturally into the Quarter, it is so classical and so 
cheap ; and very many of us seem to find the 
Mont Blanc our Ararat. The house is always 
filled with young fellows, mostly under five and 
twenty years of age, and the majority of these are 
Americans. I wonder how it is that we all chance 
to meet at one board as strangers, to grow fond, 
very fond of one another, to go out and come in 
together, and, at last, to part with some show of 
feeling (it is permissible in France), and with a 
sore heart that turns again and again to the old 
haunts, and asks itself ever the same question* 
" Shall we meet again as of yore, and sing the 
songs of the past, and agonize anew over the finan- 
cial crisis that at times seemed to involve the en- 



PARISIAN DAYS. 11 

tire community — yes, when even the young repub- 
lic apparently quakes to its foundation and threat- 
ens to go to the dogs ? " Probably we never shall. 
We fully realize this, and at times, when the 
thought strikes us with fullest force, we drink deep 
potions of black coffee and cognac and smoke 
wildly against the day of our doom. 

Mont Blanc, our castle, has an uninviting ap- 
proach ; the long, dark passage leading from the 
street to the court is very like a carriage way ; the 
court is as ugly as a stable ; even the small image 
of the Madonna in her niche above the passage 
sheds no charitable glow over the place. Nor is 
the concierge calculated to increase the patronage 
of the house by reason of any charm either spirit- 
ual or material. She was built for a very thin 
little woman, whose perpetual virtue was insured 
by reason of her excessive plainness. Not satis- 
fied with her lot, she has undergone some partial 
transformation, whether natural or artificial I 
know not, which leads the casual observer to sus- 
pect that she has been blown up with a goose- 
quill until her eyes no longer focus ; and yet she 
impresses you as being thin. Her flesh is a de- 
lusion ; her eyes alone are beyond question — those 
fatal orbs keep watch on two sides of the court at 
once. She has knowledge of our most secret 
movements ; all our hope is in her charity and lov- 
ing kindness. She it is who receives and distri- 
butes the welcome home letters ; the keys of our 



12 MASHALLAH ! 

chambers hang in a row at her side, and with a 
glance of her weather eye she can call the roll of 
the house and detect at once the delinquents. 
She can, if she chooses, exile us from the world, 
comparatively, for she has only to tell inquir- 
ing friends that we are out, when we are in, im- 
patiently awaiting their arrival, whereat they cast 
us off for ever as being no longer worthy to be 
called friend. Ah, these tyrannous, omnipresent, 
second-sighted concierges, the destinies of France 
lie in their grasp ! If I have been generous to 
this little woman in her sentry-box, she will direct 
you to my chamber ; I know this, and am there- 
fore as generous as I can afford to be. My key is 
out, I am in ; concierge requests you to enter the 
second court and climb the stairs in the farther 
corner until you come to the roof — Boom No. 
55 — this is my home. 

In the Latin Quarter, the second court is even 
more uninviting than the first. It has the deject- 
ed air of a suppressed monastery. The walls are 
very high, and full of long French windows that 
are closely curtained, for we live so near together 
in the courts that it difficult to keep from prying 
into your neighbor's business. My stairs go round 
and round like a cork-screw ; on the first landing 
you will find a pair of gaiters, rather well worn. 
They are always there till noon, and I take it the 
proprietor of these gaiters, whoever he may be, 
has a comprehensive knowledge of Paris by gas- 



PARISIAN DAYS. 13 

light. The second landing is scarcely more 
promising ; there is a small kitchen on each floor, 
and this one is in use ; a tidy woman is for ever 
stewing, and loading the air with garlic. The 
odor of singed steaks ascends to me when I care 
least for the carnal delights of life, and I am cut 
off in the midst of my best period by the hiss of 
the saucepan. But I have a kitchen all my own ; 
I too can fill the court with the fumes of dinner at 
whatever hour I choose, though there is only a 
kind of left-handed consolation in the thought, 
as I always go out to dine. Knock at my door, 
for you can go no farther. Entre ! A room no 
bigger than a billiard table, with a chimney fill- 
ing one side of it, a window directly opposite, a 
door opening in on one end and one opening out 
at the other, for I sleep in the next apartment. 
There is scarcely room on the walls for the hand- 
ful of photographs one is sure to take about with 
him — the dear home faces that do so much to- 
ward making the place habitable. My writing- 
table and two chairs obstruct the direct passage 
from door to door, and on festive occasion, when 
as many as six fellows have assembled at one and 
the same time, we most of us sit on the floor 
and smoke like regular Turks. 

It is hardly worth while looking into the next 
room. The French bed is curtained with chintz 
of a pattern so like the wall-paper that they both 
seem of a piece. A clock, mirrors, toilet-stand, 



14 MASHALLAH ! 

chairs, and the slip of carpet before the bed, that 
is sure to skate out from under you oyer the 
waxed floor just when you are least expecting 
such a catastrophe, that is all, but it is as much 
as you can expect for the money. There are 
drafts in both rooms. There is no extra charge 
for drafts ; they are not put down in your bill 
along with the candle, the soap, the towel, and 
the service. Every door, window, corner of the 
room, and crack in the floor sends up its chilling 
breath, and they all make for the chimney with 
the utmost speed. If you would be warm, keep 
away from the fire. It is utterly false, and hast- 
ens into the flue as if you hadn't paid for it and 
were not entitled to its feeble warmth. Yet here 
I write and look out of my window across the 
court, where one of the boys is at work on his 
sketches, and the hours pass rather too quickly 
(time never lags in Paris), for my work ought to 
be well over before breakfast. You see we take 
our coffee independently, when it is most conve- 
nient, say anywhere from 7 to 11 A. m. ; coffee or 
chocolate and a bit of bread keep us in working 
trim until breakfast. 

Breakfast is quite like a noon dinner, with 
soups and dessert, if we prefer them. It begins 
shortly after twelve o'clock and lasts an hour or 
two. We all meet at breakfast in the cremerie 
over the street. It is there that Theodore, who 
is learning American very rapidly, attends to us 



PARISIAN DAYS. 15 

with a consideration worthy of a man of twice 
his years and experience. The affairs of the day 
are duly canvassed ; we plot a thousand pleasant 
things and live up to about half of them ; we 
discuss art, literature, the prime donne, music, 
and the masque. We burn the fragrant weed 
over tall glasses of black coffee, and grow boister- 
ous, perchance, in argument or repartee, until a 
flying missile lands in our midst — a bread crust of 
convenient caliber — and civil war is declared for 
the space of five minutes. The bread flies in all 
directions ; the old frequenters of the cremerie 
look on with a half -smile, as if they could excuse 
this sort of thing in Americans, but in no other 
people. Those who are new to us are filled with 
astonishment and alarm, and the plump proprie- 
tor, who has been sitting along with his pretty 
niece in the pulpit by the door, descends upon us 
like an irate pedagogue, and we are persuaded to 
silence and decorum. Between breakfast and 
dinner there are six hours at our disposal. We 
revisit the Louvre and the Luxembourg for the 
fiftieth time, going now to our favorite pictures 
and statues, and ignoring the miles of canvas and 
the quarries of marble that surround us on every 
side. Some of us return to work at the atelier, 
the studio, the chamber, wherever our work lies. 
We wander thither, singly or in pairs, and the 
cremerie is left totally deserted. Dinner is even 
more joyous than breakfast, for we have probably 



16 MASHALLAH! 

accomplished something, and our work is over for 
the day. We sit two or three hours at table ; 
nothing but an early theatre or an engagement 
can turn us away from the luxury of our evening 
meal. But the cremerie closes early, and we are 
gradually snuffed out of the establishment as the 
gas-jets are extinguished one by one. Then 
come visitations among the boys. There is a 
wide range of haunts to choose from ; you can 
take a Bohemian quarter like my own, for in- 
stance, one of those cheerless resting-places such 
as a fellow on the wing grows horribly used to, or 
you can climb into a cozy nook in some great 
building where a resident student has feathered 
a nest for himself and is making the best of his 
life abroad. Here you find pictures, statuettes, a 
piano, a fire that is positively cheerful, and a 
kettle that sings in the corner of the grate — for 
there is something warming in perspective. Per- 
haps it is chess, or cards, or music, or story-tell- 
ing ; certainly it is the social pipe, and a few 
genial and wholesome hours that end too early. 
We are not always decorous in the Mont Blanc ; 
there is a room on the top floor front that has 
known the wildest revels, and this too at the most 
unseasonable hours. I would gladly frown upon 
this thing and point a moral, though I am un- 
skilled in that line, but I happen to have been 
one of the revelers. The South was entertaining 
the North with champagne and cigars one even- 



PARISIAN DAYS. 17 

ing ; from Maine to California there was the best 
possible feeling, and the South was, in turn, em- 
braced by representatives from the proudest cities 
of our land. After our reconciliation, when the 
hour for story-telling had set in, and each in his 
turn was prepared to outdo his neighbor in a 
lively but generous spirit of rivalry, we were in- 
terrupted by the approach of heavy feet, and the 
opening and severe slamming of the door in the 
room next ours. He was a Frenchman, and it 
was his custom to put off his shoes five minutes 
after his entrance and dash them down in the 
hall with unnecessary and objectionable violence. 
Again he would crash his door and then retire to 
rest. This thing had been done too often in the 
dead of night, when the whole house was thrown 
into a state of alarm, to be any longer passed over 
in silence by the United States of America. We 
resolved that, if that Frenchman hurled his boots 
into the hall that night (or rather morning), he 
would do it at his peril. We held our breath to 
listen ; his door was suddenly clutched and thrown 
open ; the boots thundered on the hall floor ; the 
door was shut with a terrific report, and at that 
moment we howled in chorus. France and the 
United States are supposed to be on the best pos- 
sible terms ; no doubt they are, over the river, but 
in the Latin Quarter, America will no longer en- 
danger her tympanum by nightly permitting the 
violent explosion of French shoe-leather immedi- 
2 



18 MASHALLAH ! 

ately under her ears. We flew into the long, 
waxed hall ; impelled by patriotism and cham- 
pagne we dashed those boots throughout the 
building, up stairs and down, out of windows 
into the court, and back again through space, 
skillfully caught on the fly by Chicago ; up to the 
ceiling again and again, and then bowled over the 
shining floor, those boots did more duty in fifteen 
minutes than ever before since they were first 
pulled from the original last. And then, ex- 
hausted, beginning to find life a burden, and to 
fear that we had few if any friends in this world, 
in fact, suddenly realizing that we were perhaps 
all orphans, or deserved to be, we embraced madly 
and went shrieking to our several apartments. 
Our concierge the next day was not kindly dis- 
posed toward us. She took us each in turn, as 
we contributed our keys to the rack in her sentry- 
box, and reproached us bitterly. I saw Chicago, 
speechless but defiant, receiving the brunt of the 
abuse. It was emphasized with a long wand 
which was waved fiercely in the air, but there 
was no personal violence, nor the administration 
of anything more unpalatable than a torrent of 
French invective, strengthened with much offen- 
sive truth. Take the head of an india-rubber 
doll, apply your thumb and finger to either ear, 
compress the skull till your thumb and finger 
meet, and the eyes of the doll slide on to each 
side of the face, like the eyes of a fish, and you 



PARIS BY GASLIGHT. 19 

have the very image of our concierge as she ap- 
peared the morning after the sacking of the house. 
Some of us left for our health ; we wanted quiet 
apartments where our friends would not be turned 
forth into the street with a smile and a lie. 



II. 

PARIS BY GASLIGHT. 

Hotel du Mont Blanc, Rue de Seine, Paris. 
Our hotel is like a great boys' boarding-school. 
We from time to time smoke out our neighbors in 
the most playful manner. We occasionally in- 
dulge in a light engagement with pillows, robed 
in the brief garments of our sleep. We are not 
always sleepy, and perhaps would fain return 
again to citizens' dress, and go forth seeking the 
untimely veal pie, which is obtainable at a re- 
duced rate owing to the lateness of the hour and 
the unfavorable symptoms already developing in 
the pie ; we sometimes do this, and at such times 
we find it a merciful relief from the tedious gaye- 
ties of the French capital ; but just now we are 
called into action by the bare-kneed battalion, 
heavily mounted, and all thoughts of pie are 
driven from our minds till after the heat of the 
engagement has subsided and there are signs of 
returning peace. This sort of thing doesn't hap- 



20 MASHALLAH ! 

pen every night ; believe it not of us, for we are, 
after all, workers, and pretty hard ones, too. 
Not one of us but has ambition, not one but 
hopes to return to his distant home with a record 
that will gladden the hearts of those who have 
been hoping and praying for him all these months. 
We must have our recreation. Great Heaven ! 
would you have us old before our time ? Dull- 
hearted, stiff-jointed, sad-eyed things who have 
lost the faculty of enjoyment ? Hence the medi- 
cinal properties of the Boullier are strongly urged, 
and we hie us with expectant steps to the gay 
halls where sin skips nimbly arm in arm with 
innocence and verdancy and the inquiring mind 
of the curious and the passive spirit of the travel- 
ing correspondent. Away beyond the lovely gar- 
dens of the Luxembourg, the gardens of our 
quarter, is the Boullier, with a dazzling array of 
gas-jets flaming over its fagade. We fall in along 
the line of visitors besieging the ticket office, in 
our turn pay a franc admission, and the next 
moment find ourselves at the top of a broad 
flight of stairs leading into a gorgeous cellar. 
The decorations are Moorish or mongrel, I know 
not which ; but they are sufficiently garish to 
suit the character of the place. In the center of 
the great hall is an oasis filled with musicians. 
They smoke, chat, lean over the railing with hats 
on the backs of their heads, and are quite indif- 
ferent to the opinion of any one present. Per- 



PARIS BY GASLIGHT. 21 

haps they are right. Who cares for the opinion 
of any one here, though we ourselves are of the 
number ? The time and the place annul all cau- 
tion, pride, modesty — everything, in fact, save a 
desire to smoke and quench one's thirst and be 
jolly. A thousand lamps of every lovely tint 
swing from the painted ceiling, and the many 
arches supported by light columns are again and 
again repeated in the long mirrors that line the 
walls. At the end of the hall is a pretty artificial 
garden, with its grottoes and its pools of goldfish, 
its fountains, statues, and beds of lovely flowers ; 
and everywhere there are small round tables 
thronged with men and women who do nothing 
but drink, drink, drink, and smoke and laugh 
boisterously. 

Crash ! the music has begun ! There is a 
rush for the open spaces, where only is dancing 
possible ; there is no director nor floor-manager, 
no method at all ; every one looks out for himself 
or herself, and somehow out of the confusion a 
quadrille is formed in one corner, and then an- 
other and another, until there are a dozen of 
them well at work, or at play, which is it ? — and 
by this time the first figure of the set is over. 
The spectators crowd close about the dancers, and 
are often troublesome. This is the kingdom of 
license, and you may say what you please to any 
one, dance with whom you choose, do what you 
like ; in truth you are expected not to be stupid 



22 MASHALLAH ! 

when you come to the Boullier. As the dance 
progresses the interest increases, for the dancers 
become heated, and it is only at such times that 
the can-can is endurable. The shrill music crash- 
es through the liveliest figure of the quadrille ; we 
work our way into the crowd until we can stand 
on tip-toe and look over some one's shoulder. 
Before us are two couples, very young ones, but 
with strangely wise faces, worldly wise I mean, 
and with a kind of devilish grace in their every 
motion that fascinates you. They advance and 
recede with infinite swagger. They throw them- 
selves suddenly into attitudes that defy descrip- 
tion ; as well attempt to picture in words the 
writhing of a tigress as she plays with her young ; 
the voluptuous posing, the quivering of the supple 
limbs, the curving of the spine and the waving to 
and fro of the head, snake-like and full of cun- 
ning ; the sly, soft crouching that indicate a pre- 
meditated spring. Whoop la! There you have 
it ! The men — they are mere boys — dash their 
genteel beavers on to the napes of their necks, 
seize the skirts of their coats, and go through a 
series of gymnastic feats as ludicrous as they are 
ungraceful. The women — they are girls — switch 
up their skirts above the knee, and deliberately 
kick over the heads of their partners. Not satis- 
fied with this display, one of them grasps her 
ankle with one hand and raises it above her head, 
where she waves her dainty boot to and fro, keep- 



PARIS BY GASLIGHT. 23 

ing time to the music. The other turns a clumsy- 
summersault and lands in the center of the open 
space, where she rests with her two feet pointing 
north and south, quite in the manner of a circus 
boy when he spreads his legs sideways like a pair 
of compasses, and this is hailed with delight by 
the spectators. There is nothing after that save 
a repetition of the same sort of ungraceful climax, 
and even the dancers seem to grow weary of it, 
for they seldom finish the last figure, but turn 
away and lose themselves in the crowd. Every al- 
ternate dance is a can-can quadrille, between 
which come waltzes, polkas, etc. It is in the 
waltz only that the dancers display the daring 
that alone makes the Boullier attractive or even 
interesting. Yet three times a week this hall is 
filled from 9 p. m. to midnight ; the low gallery 
on three sides of it is always crowded with specta- 
tors, who sit at their tables with beer and cigars, 
and watch the dancers to the end. You will 
find every class of people at the Boullier and 
the other dance halls of Paris where the reputa- 
tion of the dancers is dubious. English swells in 
monk-like ulsters sometimes have with them a 
fair companion (let us trust she is fair), who is 
closely veiled, who never for a moment quits his 
side, who is evidently shy and out of place, and is 
probably his bride. The American is there, feel- 
ing quite at home, and refusing to be astonished 
at anything Parisian. 



24 MASHALLAH ! 

We are there sometimes, many of us togeth- 
er ; we look on at the same old dances, as danced 
by the same old dancers, who are mostly pro- 
fessionals hired for the occasion. We have learned 
to know the faces of many who go always to these 
halls ; we can now point you to the best set of can- 
can dancers, who show infinite art and exquisite 
grace in their interpretation of this barbaric pan- 
tomime. We lounge about till the air has become 
utterly oppressive with the smoke and the heat 
and the hubbub. Late in the night there is no- 
thing but riot ; loud, meaningless laughter ; the 
skipping to and fro of those who have but one 
desire left, and that is to create as much disturb- 
ance on as small a capital as possible. We with- 
draw while the room is still in a whirl, and the 
dancers at the farther end of the room float about 
in the thick smoke like ghosts ; while the click 
of glasses and the screams of unnatural joy mingle 
and are lost in the deafening crash of the orches- 
tra. Probably we go down the street arm in arm, 
singing the songs of home, such as "Silver 
Threads, " " Senators, whar you goin'?" and other 
airs with which it is our delight to astonish the 
fat cabmen, those rosy fellows who line the street 
at the most unearthly hours, and who look all 
alike, with a likeness that is of nothing in heaven 
nor earth, nor the waters under the earth, but 
only of the sleepy, sleek, round, expressionless 
cabmen of Paris. Having aroused many sleepers 



FROM THE LATIN QUARTER. 25 

with the fierce rendering of favorite national airs, 
and attracted the attention of a brace of gen- 
darmes, the handsomest and most elegant fellows 
in Paris, we come home to the Mont Blanc, ring 
up the night-watchman, who sleeps with a rope 
just over his head, and in his dream pulls the 
heavy lock on the outer door without waking; 
pushing in the swinging panel in the great door, 
the great door which is not opened till morning, 
we light our respective candles, take keys, and bid 
farewell to one another and to the frivolities of 
life in general, and go yawning to our beds. 



III. 

FROM THE LATItf QUARTER. 

Hotel du Mont Blanc, Rue de Seine, Paris. 
For two months I seem to have been dashed 
from one extreme to another, through the widest 
range of experiences I have ever known in so brief 
a time in a single locality. The Latin Quarter is 
not in itself altogether lovely; the streets are 
tangled and narrow and unclean. The houses are 
mostly ugly. We have the fine church of St. 
Sulpice only a stone's throw distant, and close at 
hand is beautiful old St. Germain, the oldest and 
perhaps most picturesque church in Paris, with 
its frescoes by that devout Catholic artist, Hippo- 



26 MASHALLAH ! 

lyte Flandrin. Around the corner is the small 
house with the turret and the grated windows 
where Charlotte Corday dealt death to Marat ; but 
the whole corner is being swept away to make 
room for newer and less interesting buildings. All 
up and down these streets there are shops where 
antique books, prints, and all manner of bric-a- 
brac may be bargained for. The Seine is lined 
with vendors of cheap literature ; near St. Sulpice 
there is an inexhaustible store of sacred prints, 
medals, rosaries, and church furniture. Indeed, 
you can get almost anything you wish on our side 
of the river, and you will get it for half the price 
that is demanded on the Eue de Eivoli. It is not 
this alone which makes the Quarter a desirable 
residence for a student of limited means ; here he 
can live as he sees fit and no man shall say him 
yea or nay. 

See how my days have passed in Paris, and 
tell me if they be not full of experience. After 
my coffee, which I too often take quite alone, I 
hasten to the bedside of a friend lying danger- 
ously ill in a convent at the other end of the city. 
Her illness, her fatal illness, alone gains me ad- 
mission into the seclusion of this serene retreat. 
For one hour — having been admitted through the 
ponderous gates into a garden where the statue of 
the Madonna, now packed in straw to protect it 
against the frosts, is covered with shivering birds, 
who cling to it for a little warmth — having found 



FROM THE LATIN QUARTER. 27 

my friend better or worse, as the case may be, 
for one hour I know the impressive silence of the 
sick-chamber, and know also the companionship 
of those low-voiced sisters, whose lives are sealed 
to suffering and death. When my visitation is 
over, I find that I am booked for breakfast with 
that capital fellow, the author of "My Paris," 
when I am sure of absorbing something of his 
exhilarating atmosphere. Having quitted his 
chambers with a freshly-lit cigar, I return to 
work. Or, if I am out of working humor, there 
is the studio of a young marine painter, of Phila- 
delphia, away up in a splendid old abbey, where 
at night the rustle of silk is heard and muttering 
voices, where shadowy forms float about in the 
moonlight. What a strange, unwritten history 
that abbey must have ! Just now Philadelphia's 
unrivaled collection of pipes interests us more 
deeply, and we smoke, and dream of his moonlit 
seas and wild bits of windy coast, and talk largely 
of the Centennial. Or, it may be, I find my way 
to California's den, decorated with studies that 
range from Shasta to the sea. 

In the intervals 'twixt my early visit and my 
late revisit to the chamber of sorrow and suffer- 
ing, many little events occur ; too many to be re- 
corded, and too uneventful, most of them, to be 
worth recording. Often I have turned in at the 
Morgue, and found it usually the favorite resort 
of very small children ; boys and girls running on 



28 MASHALLAH ! 

errands make it convenient to look in at the dis- 
colored bodies stretched stark and stiff under the 
water-spout, with a great horror settled on their 
faces. Peace comes not to these suicides and 
these victims of hunger and rage. Even under the 
shadow of Notre Dame, almost within the glow 
of the tapers that flicker before the altar of our 
Blessed Lady of Victories, they lie there, the for- 
saken victims of hopeless defeat. Again and 
again I turn to seek consolation by the domestic 
hearth of San Francisco friends, where I am sure 
of a welcome and a dinner of home dishes, such 
as are as good for the heart-hungry as for those 
whose cravings are more carnal. There is one 
restaurant where we boys resort to restore our 
souls at an extravagant figure. The American 
patriot and the pancake are inseparable ; misery 
and mince-pie can not dwell under the same roof. 
We are, for the time being, happy and patriotic 
to the last degree. What shall I say of the chaste 
retreat, the dainty drawing-room, done up in the 
Louis XIV style, with its variegated upholstery, 
its cupids, its clocks, its screens, and the thousand 
and one bits of finery that make the whole look 
like a big play-house ? Here I meet old friends, 
and we live over again the California days. 

Writing of extremes, I think of my Latin- 
Quarter attic, dingy, cheerless, drafty, and I turn 
from it to the palace of Monte Cristo, just for the 
novelty of the change. Last winter in Venice 



FROM THE LATIN QUARTER. 29 

the Egyptian steamer brought an addition to our 
small foreign colony. Coming, as he did, fresh 
from Egypt, where his life had been a kind of 
dream, an episode in an Arabian night, we were 
drawn to one another intuitively ; and when, af- 
ter a few days, he left Venice, I thought it more 
than likely that we should not meet again. But 
who shall say what is not possible in Paris ? 
One friend in her convent passing away in the 
midst of perpetual prayers and entreaties ; but a 
few blocks distant another friend waiting to wel- 
come me. The latter had been home ; had flown 
hither and thither in search of health and rest ; 
was back again in Paris, and hard at work. I 
was shown to his reception-room, in a house hid- 
den away in one of those cloister-like inclosures 
called a cite. Monte Cristo was at home, and 
came forward to greet me in his fez. Turkish 
tapestries covered the four walls ; Arabian rugs 
lay on the floor, lapped one over the other ; Per- 
sian lanterns of stained glass hung from the ceil- 
ing, and threw an enchanting light over the scene ; 
the windows and the doors were entirely hidden 
by rich draperies ; the mirror above the mantel 
was obscured by clusters of Eastern palms — baby 
palms in porcelain cradles, but lusty and vigorous 
palms for all that. One side of the room was 
filled with a deep divan of satin and silk, heaped 
with cushions and embroidered coverings. The 
center-table was one monument of mellow-tinted, 



30 MASHALLAH ! 

thick-crusted silk embroidery — antique, camphor- 
ated, beautiful for ever. Venetian and Egyptian 
studies were heaped about the room, and a thou- 
sand dainty ornaments were displayed. A bazaar 
of Cairo is not more tantalizing than this artistic 
bachelor-haunt. What if we sat after dinner 
curled up on the divan and smoked the nargileh, 
and then, like children decked in the sumptuous 
finery of the far East, burnt pastils and dreamed 
dreams and played at being weary of life, and 
wondered what pyramid should hold our em- 
balmed dust when we had at last smoked our- 
selves to death ? Coffee came in its own good 
time, and in cups of such exquisite workmanship 
that, but for the richly-fretted network of gold 
that encased the fragile porcelain shells, they must 
have been crushed in the fingers. Oh ! but that 
is the royal road to success ! 

My friend has passed from earth ; almost alone 
in this great city. Death and separation immi- 
nent have cast a shadow over the last few days. 
The boys are going home ; some of them for 
good, others to return anon ; but I know the old 
place will never be quite the same. No more pri- 
vate dinners in L.'s room ; no silver flutings from 
the lips of F. F., of Winona ; no festive nights at 
the chambers in the Mont Blanc ; even D. will 
have gone home to build up his native city and 
his reputation at one and the same time. And 
he whom we have looked upon as a model of all 



FROM THE LATIN QUARTER. 31 

the virtues, yet whose buff overcoat we were sure 
to see at the Boullier when least expected, it may 
be he will lose his good name and become virtu- 
ous in very truth. Dublin will have grown seri- 
ous, and Pard gay ; in fact, we won't any of us 
know the other in a very brief season, the more's 
the pity. Inasmuch as we all fully realize this, 
we have been rushing to and fro with albums, 
gathering autographic sketches in memory of the 
time. Some of these are exceedingly fine, and 
all are just the sort of reminders that will by and 
by make the heart beat a little faster when we 
turn the leaves and know the fate that is in store 
for each of us. I can not reproduce for you the 
sketches, but you shall have some lines I am per- 
mitted to copy ; they will show you the spirit 
that pervades the Quarter, for they are out of one 
of the albums I have referred to. They are 
called 

AT PARTING. 

Only a page in your book 

Along with the other fellows ; 
I hate to stop out in the cold, dear Lin, 

Cut off with the " sears " and the " yellows." 

Only a scratch of my pen, 

That stumbles even in starting, 
For I can't say half of the things I feel 

As I cling to your hand at parting. 

Only a dinner or two 

In a warm, cozy corner that we know ; 



32 MASHALLAH ! 

Only a smoke with the rest of the boys, 
Or a night at the Valentino ! 

Only a meeting by chance, 

And a parting — by Jove ! yet not only — 
Again I shall think of them all, and again, 

In the honrs that are sure to be lonely. 

Only a jingle of rhymes 

For the sake of the days that are over — 
The days that shall live in the happiest dreams 

That lighten the heart of a rover ! 

That is the end of it all ! "Without one farewell, 
taking my last dinner quite alone, so as to save 
myself the pain of parting, I sprang into a car- 
riage and fled to the Lyons station. It was a 
long, cold drive. I thought of a thousand things, 
but I didn't think that my flight would be dis- 
covered, and that at that moment there was a 
carriage in the rear tearing after me ! They 
caught me, some of those dear fellows, just as I 
was being hurried away by the guard. One swift, 
manly embrace, a grip of the hand that made my 
blood tingle, a last look into the brave, earnest 
faces I have grown so used to, and the next mo- 
ment I was rushing out of the bracing bitterness 
of the Paris winter, flying southward in the track 
of the swallows. 



MARSEILLES. 33 

IV. 

MARSEILLES. 

Vekice, Genoa, and Marseilles, how the gold- 
en wave of commerce that rolls in from the 
Orient has heaped their thresholds with rich and 
splendid freights ! They are much alike, these 
storehouses of gums and spices, and cloths of 
gold and camel's hair. Under my window in 
Marseilles, a window that opens upon the great 
harbor, and looks up to the church of Notre 
Dame de la Garde, on its holy hill, under my win- 
dow I hear all the tongues of Babel, and see all 
the costumes of the earth mixing hourly in the 
carnival of this seaport life. There are proud 
Moors who stalk by with the stateliness of Salyini 
in Othello ; the Spaniard and the East Indian go 
hand in hand ; the Turk, the Italian, and the 
Dane hobnob with the Yankee skipper, who in- 
dulges in a little French when opportunity offers, 
but it is the execrable French of South France, 
and suffers a sad change in the lips of the skip- 
per, which puts it quite beyond the interpretation 
of the most ingenious linguist. Just below the 
hotel there is an entertainment loudly heralded 
by a trumpeter as black as a burnt cork. You 
enter the harem by the polite invitation of a port- 
ly gentleman in a fez and scarlet "bloomers"; 
3 



34 MASHALLAH ! 

within there is a divan on which reclines a lovely 
but expressionless creature, who smokes the long- 
stemmed water-pipe of her country, and makes 
enormous eyes at you. Two or three sleepy fel- 
lows sit about, and look excessively bored ; they 
are the vigilant guardians of the seraglio. Half 
a watch of sailors, a soldier, a Spanish merchant, 
and myself stand in a row and look blandly on. 
The houri yawns and smiles ; the eunuchs nod 
and grin ; we of the audience turn to one anoth- 
er, burst into a smothered laugh, and withdraw 
in a body, leaving two sous each with the Pacha, 
who thanks us in Italian. The bazaars are open 
all along the quay, and small cargoes of stuffs 
from foreign ports are bid off rapidly at auction 
in the very midst of the pavement. 

It is spring weather in January ; the doors and 
windows are flung wide open ; the Tivoli Gardens 
at the end of the charming Prado, an avenue that 
must be a perpetual benediction in the heat of 
midsummer, are all in blossom, and the fountain 
that glorifies the handsome and rather eccentric- 
looking Musee de Longcliamp doesn't chill you 
with its spray, even in midwinter. Only to 
think that we are but sixteen hours from Paris, 
where they are skating in the Bois and throwing 
cinders on the street to keep the horses from fall- 
ing ! At the Musee the two wings of the build- 
ing, or rather the two buildings, are connected by 
a stately colonnade, and a large fountain or water- 



MARSEILLES. 35 

fall gushes from the midst thereof. You stand 
at the foot of the long stairs and look up at this 
fountain ; then you ascend a little way and glance 
across it ; after that you beam down from the 
colonnade upon the torrent of water under you, 
and hear its roar all about you, and meet scores of 
people, who are doing the fountain, like yourself, 
full of wonder and delight. The canvases that 
have been immortalized by Perugino, Eubens, 
Van Dyck, and Holbein are not to be thought of 
until the great fountain has been duly admired ; 
in truth, I fancy that most of us prefer lounging 
about among the Ionic columns that spring from 
beds of lilies and water-plants to studying the 
master works within. Marseilles is so lively and so 
fresh looking that you would never for a moment 
suspect it of having a history. Paris or Vienna 
might easily absorb much of the city, and you 
would not detect any material difference in the 
aspect or the atmosphere of either. Yet Massilia 
was six hundred years of age when Christ came 
into the world. Agricola went to boarding-school 
in Marseilles, for in those days it was quite as 
Greek as Athens, and perhaps Agricola's father 
thought it a trifle ahead of the latter. You know 
Tacitus married into the family and recorded this 
fact. There was a Temple of Diana on the site 
of the present cathedral, and Neptune and Apollo 
were worshiped on the coast. Leaning over the 
fine terrace in front of the cathedral — it is not 



36 MASHALLAH ! 

yet completed — I thought of this, and, while I 
was dreaming there, a regiment of swarthy Zou- 
aves came ashore from a ship just in from Africa. 
They were the most gorgeous specimens of color 
imaginable ; bronzed faces ; drooping, amber- 
tinted mustaches faded in the sun ; little scarlet 
caps on the very back of their head, with long 
tassels dangling below the shoulders, and jackets, 
baggy trousers, cloaks, and scarfs that blended the 
mellowest shades of a tropical sunset. They 
moved along the quay and passed silently into 
one of the great forts that are perched about the 
rocky harbor. And what a harbor it is ! Twenty 
thousand vessels enter and quit it annually ; the 
great stone docks that line one side of it are like 
a series of reception-rooms with folding doors be- 
tween them in the shape of draw-bridges. When 
the proposed additions are completed, for there 
is still a demand for sea-lodgings at Marseilles, 
this will be the largest harbor in the world. Not- 
witstanding its age, the only trace of antiquity 
now in tolerable preservation at Marseilles is the 
church of St. Victor, where Pope Urban V was 
once abbot. I mistook it for a fort, walked twice 
around it before I found an entrance, and then 
supposed I was going into the crypt, but arrived, 
after several turns, in the nave that had shel- 
tered the devout for nearly seven centuries. At 
the top of that holy hill stands Notre Dame de la 
Garde, Various paths wind up the rocky slopes ; 



MARSEILLES. 37 

but at last the ascent is so steep that long flights 
of steps land you at the entrance of the church. 
It is a church within a fort ; there is a moat 
about it ; you cross a small bridge that can be 
withdrawn, and thus isolate that sacred edifice. 
The way is lined with little booths, where rosaries 
and souvenirs are sold. The keepers of the 
booths hail you as you toil up the hill. With- 
in the church there are hundreds of those pa- 
thetic, yet often ludicrous votive pictures recording 
the deliverance from evil of all sorts of sinners. 
In one corner of the picture, the apparition of 
" Notre Dame de la Garde " is sure to be inserted, 
looking very much like a postage-stamp. There 
are miniature ships suspended from the ceiling 
like great spiders ; ships that have beguiled the 
tedious hours of sailors whose escape from watery 
graves has filled their hearts with gratitude that 
finds this touching and ingenuous expression. 
All day the paths to the chapel of Our Lady are 
thronged with pilgrims. What an hour of rest 
one gets there, above the busy and noisy town, 
looking off upon the sea dotted with islands and 
fringed with jutting capes. The clouds seem to 
lean down upon it, fair sails fade away on the 
horizon, the river trails a dark curtain across the 
middle distance, the sun breaks through a rift in 
the cloud and touches the dark waves with flame. 
These little islands at the entrance to the harbor, 
though they are as bare as chalk, are not with- 



38 MASHALLAH ! 

out interest. It was at the Chateau d'lf , a gloomy 
prison, that Mirabeau was confined ; and to-day, 
if you were to take one of the hundred boats 
that lie at the quay, with a boatman crying the 
" Chateau d'lf " as long as you were within hear- 
ing, you would be gravely shown into the cell of 
" Monte Cristo," as I was, and perhaps it would 
interest you more than anything else in the prem- 
ises. . . . 

Steamer "Byzantine," off Marseilles. 

First Day. — We are off at last ; about us are 
the hideous cliffs of the harbor, that seem to stand 
open like jaws set thick with fangs. There is a 
heavy swell in the channel near the islands, and 
we have just shipped a big sea, that has washed 
us all into the cabin like so many drowned flies. 
The great golden statue of Notre Dame de la 
Garde flashes from the tower-top on Holy Hill. 
Long after we have lost sight of Marseilles, 
and when the sea begins to spread itself be- 
tween us and the shore, we can still observe 
the faint glow of Notre Dame, and the sight of 
it is a consolation, for it is our last glimpse of 
France. 

Secokd Day. — Nearly run down little Cor- 
sica this morning. Why will these islands per- 
sist in getting in the way of Oriental steamers ? 
Were obliged to turn out for Corsica. Small as 
she is, we are even smaller, and then she is an- 



MAKSEILLES. 39 

chored, and we are not. There is a kind of 
etiquette to be observed, though we are neither 
in the heavens above nor the earth beneath ! 
Have been hugging Sardinia in the most disgrace- 
ful manner all day long, but Sardinia does not 
seem to care a continental. Are very near the 
shore ; deep valleys open to us, and we see grand, 
misty mountains in the distance ; the Sardinian 
silhouette at sunset is as irregular as the profile 
of a horned toad. Just nodded to Caprera as we 
passed ; one of the officers pointed out a little 
spot in the hills, and said it was " La Casa di 
Garibaldi." We looked intently at it until we 
rounded a point and spoke a fishing-smack full 
of Sardines or Sardinians — what would you call 
the inhabitants of that island ? I mean those 
that have been pretty thoroughly salted. 

Third Day. — Passed a bit of land in the night 
with nothing but a light-house to distinguish it 
from the darkness ; saw the blue cloud called 
Sicily floating on the tip-top of the horizon, just 
as we all went below to our French breakfast. 
When coffee and cigarettes were over, the cloud 
had vanished. Spoke an Italian steamer that was 
so excessively small the passengers on the flush 
deck looked like Colossi. There is nothing to do 
but haul up to Malta at our earliest conveni- 
ence. I don't see why so much has been written 
about the horrors of the Mediterranean Sea ! The 
weather is delicious ; the air balmy ; the table 



40 MASHALLAH ! 

well supplied. The only objectionable feature of 
the passage, so far, is a Turk, who coughs in the 
pit of his stomach. When that Turk gets up at 
night to cough, you would mistake him for a blad- 
der of dried peas being violently shaken. 



MALTA. 



All day we plowed an ugly sea, slowly work- 
ing our way toward Malta. I knew that Sicily 
was but sixty miles away from Malta and took 
hope, though St. Paul had a rough time of it in 
these waters and came to shore on the little isl- 
and in anything but ship-shape. Toward twi- 
light, before the sun was fairly down, we were all 
astir on board. Some one had kindly raised land 
on our larboard bow, and though it was poor land 
to look at, and might have passed for a big turtle 
asleep on the waters, we accepted it and began to 
congratulate ourselves that we should ride at 
anchor that night, and take breakfast right side 
up instead of horizontally, as was the case only 
a few hours before. Malta is certainly an un- 
lovely island. It is quite the fashion to speak 
lightly of its soil, there is so little of it ; and to 
call the water brackish, and to wonder why there 
are three little islands in the group, when one of 



MALTA. 41 

that sort would be sufficient to satisfy any reason- 
able soul. The Maltese on board are indignant, 
and point out its celebrated resorts and speak 
with enthusiasm of its charming climate. It lies 
half way between Italy and Africa. It is better 
than either in many respects, they who dwell on 
this lonely rock think, which means, in reality, 
that it is neither the one thing nor the other. As 
we draw in nearer the shore, a fellow passenger, 
who has made Malta his home for many years, 
grows jubilant, and seizes me by the arm to tell me 
the old story of St. Paul's wreck. " There is the 
very spot," says he, "and many a picnic have I 
enjoyed in the cove under the hill. " Sure enough, 
there it all was, "a certain creek with a shore," 
and on the cliff above the shore a colossal statue 
of the saint, just distinguishable in the twilight — 
a great white figure like a ghost, brooding over 
the fretful sea. It was undoubtedly a favorable 
season for refreshing one's memory of that nota- 
ble shipwreck, and in half an hour no fewer than 
five versions of the wreck were given in as many 
languages by men who spoke as if they had been 
eye-witnesses of the scene. We recalled how St. 
Paul was shipped to Italy, how he touched at 
Sidon, and how "Julius courteously entreated 
Paul, and gave him liberty to go with his friends 
and refresh himself." How, afterward, they 
sailed under Cyprus, and over the Sea of Cilicia 
and Pamphylia, and came to Lysia. How they 



42 MASHALLAH ! 

cruised by Onidus and Crete, and the Fair Havens, 
and then the prophetic lips foretold the danger 
that lay in store. But the old salts of those days 
had as little confidence in landsmen as in this 
hour, and "when the south wind blew softly" 
they loosened sail and bore down under the shores 
of Crete. It was a bad move, for Euroclydon, a 
tempestuous wind, caught them, and they could 
not bear up against it. For many days neither 
sun nor stars appeared, and the ship was driven 
up and down in the raging sea. They lightened 
the storm-bound bark, they ungirded her, they 
" strake sail" ; with their own hands they threw 
out the tackling of the ship, and then yielded to 
their fate. Again the saint was moved to prophe- 
cy, and he had them this time. " You should 
have stayed at Crete," said he ; " yet fear not, for 
no man among you shall be lost, only but the 
ship." They came to a land which they knew not, 
after fourteen days of unutterable misery. It 
was midnight, and very cold. They sounded, and 
found that it was twenty fathoms ; again they 
sounded, and found it was fifteen fathoms, and 
then they threw four anchors out of the stern, 
and "wished for day." The saint was, after all, 
the best seaman of the lot, for without him that 
company could not have got safely to shore. In 
the morning they took up their anchors, made 
sail and drove their bow right into the sandy beach, 
and the ship went to pieces, and every one of the 



MALTA. 43 

two hundred three score and sixteen souls set foot 
on Malta without stopping to consider the beauty 
or the barrenness of the island at the moment. 
My Maltese friend assures me that the snakes in 
Malta, and there are plenty of them, are all per- 
fectly harmless, and that this has been the case 
ever since St. Paul shook the viper from his hand 
into the fire, on the bank yonder, the morning 
after the wreck. When I had come to the end 
of my sojourn in Malta, and was thinking of the 
chief point of interest on the sixty monotonous 
miles of coast, my eye chanced to fall upon this 
paragraph, in a small history of the island that 
lay open before me : 

"St. Paul's Bay is now a watering-place, where 
many of the inhabitants pass the summer months." 

Half an hour's ride from St. Paul's watering- 
place is the grotto of Calypso. Could Homer 
have ever seen it, or was he born blind that he 
sang of the spot in a strain that ought to increase 
emigration to Malta ? It is now celebrated for 
the enormous quantities of sandwiches and soda- 
water consumed on the premises, and there is not 
a line of Homer discernible as far as eye can see. 
It is after sunset when we steam into the harbor 
of Valetta and let go our anchor. Half an hour 
before, we rolled up under the low cliffs of the 
island, finding it difficult to focus any given object, 
but now we lie as still as a picture in the deep, 



44 MASHALLAH ! 

quiet waters, only a stone's throw from shore. 
All about us tower the hills that are literally 
clothed with fortifications. The city stands on 
end, with one house beginning where another 
leaves off, so that you can see nothing but win- 
dows and roofs stretching from the water's edge 
to the very sky. There are hanging gardens, tier 
upon tier, that carefully hide all traces of verdure, 
and you don't know they are green and lovely 
gardens until you wander about the town, climb- 
ing hither and thither, and suddenly find your- 
self in one of them. The house windows are 
mostly pushed out over the narrow streets, like 
small balconies enclosed in glass, and dark blinds 
give them a tropical appearance that reminds us 
that we are not far from the African coast. 

The harbor, a mile and a half long, and nearly 
land-locked, is alive with small Maltese boats, that 
curl over at the stem and stern as if the boat- 
builder had taken the superfluous ends of the 
little craft and made a "beau-catcher" for orna- 
ment. Great ships swing near us at anchor. 
There are singers floating to and fro, and hailing 
us between the stanzas with an invitation to shore. 
Even the voices from the quays are distinctly 
audible, and, but for the gibberish, the Maltese 
dialect, which seems to be a mixture of Arabic 
and Italian, we might pass an hour in trying to 
catch a phrase, and learn the gossip of Malta. A 
thousand lights twinkle on the hills. We seem to 



MALTA. 45 

be in the midst of a vast amphitheatre on a festa 
night, and this is entertainment enough for the 
present. We learn that the opera-house is burned, 
that the cafes are dull, that there is nothing else 
worth mentioning in the shape of amusements 
save an Italian melodrama, so we stop on board 
for the night — I mean those of us who are only- 
touching at Malta on our way to Alexandria. 
The Maltese have deserted us. There was infinite 
trouble in getting ashore, though the Custom- 
house officers never molest you at this port. The 
boatmen positively fought for custom ; even the 
smallest passenger is a godsend to these poor fel- 
lows, who seem to be famishing, and no wonder. 
Malta, for its size, contains a denser population 
than any other port of the habitable globe. This 
rocky oasis in the sea has been the scene of re- 
peated conflicts from the days of the Phoenicians 
down to the beginning of this century, when it 
passed quietly into the hands of the British, and 
has rejoiced in shapely officers with short red 
coats and sturdy Highlanders with bare legs ever 
since. But only while Malta was the island king- 
dom of the Knights of St. John has romance 
succeeded in throwing a spell over it. The 
Greeks, Eomans, Goths, Arabs, and their succes- 
sors seemed eager to get possession of the island, 
that they might thus prevent their neighbors 
from gaining a foothold there. They have all, or 
nearly all, left traces of their seed in this stony 



46 MASHALLAH ! 

soil. The costumes of a carnival are daily aired 
in the high gardens of Valetta, and the tongues 
of Babel confuse the ear in the steep streets of 
the city. While the boatmen are singing in the 
starlight, I fumble through the leaves of my 
pocket-copy of " The Historical Guide to Malta," 
printed on the premises, and there get a glimpse 
of the songs of the people, and find them ex- 
tremely poor. The melody is bad enough, but the 
poetry is worse. Here is a specimen of their sen- 
timent, a song at parting : 

Beloved, I am about to leave you, 
I sigh that I take you not with me ; 
May God give you new resignation, 
And preserve you secure in my love. 

And preserve you secure in my love, 
That you ever remember me ; 
Bemember I always have loved you, 
Since the time I was but an infant. 

Since the time I was but an infant, 
My heart has always been drawn to you ; 
And I can walk in no ether light 
But the light of your beautiful eyes. 

In the light of your beautiful eyes 
I have always directed my steps. 

And so on for several stanzas, in each of which 
the last line of the preceding stanza is repeated 
and added to. The following naive verses are 



MALTA. 47 

thought to be a tolerable specimen of the songs 
popular among the common people : 

Would you know what a maiden does 
From morning until evening ? 
She adorns her head with curls, 
And seats herself in the balcony. 

She seats herself in the balcony, 
And sets about making love ; 
When she sees her mother coming, 
She begins hemming her handkerchief. 

The young man walks up and down, 

To see if the old woman is there. 

He traverses the street from one end to the other. 

He meets with an old grandmother, 

And says, " Woman, will you help me ? 

I care nothing about money, 

So as that you are able to serve me." 

In the song, the marriage is proposed but comes 
to naught, for the young woman in the balcony is 
evidently a flirt. Fancy these songs droned mono- 
tonously to the accompaniment of the bagpipes 
and tambourine. 

At daybreak the following morning we were 
surrounded by barges full of goods to be shipped, 
and barges empty, awaiting such freight as we 
had brought to Malta ; the engines were at work 
hoisting out bales and boxes, and, with this din 
of commerce in my ears, I hastened on shore to 
see the town. 



48 MASHALLAH ! 

It is pretty enough as it spreads over the hills ; 
you cross a drawbridge and go under an arch in the 
natural rock, near the water, and thus you enter 
Valetta. The streets are picturesque ; some of 
them are like long flights of stairs, with the houses 
on each side of them like larger steps, one above 
another. Cascades of people are continually tum- 
bling down these stairs, or sitting in eddies on the 
way, knitting, chatting, smoking. Statues of 
saints are at the street corners, with lamps burning 
before them. Your guide tells you a thousand 
things of the town and the people that interest you 
very little. One fact is evident — there are more 
hands eager for work, more mouths hungry for food 
than the market is able to satisfy. The guide 
thinks I must be deeply interested in the Gover- 
nor's palace, and therefore turns me over to the 
pompous butler, who drawls out his tiresome de- 
scriptive text as we two wander through the rather 
fine apartments. We see coats of mail worn by 
the Knights of Malta in the glorious days of that 
Order, and cross-bows, javelins, battle-axes, and 
the usual curios of an armory. There is a can- 
non here five feet long, three inch caliber, made 
of tarred rope bound round a thin lining of cop- 
per, and covered on the outside with a coating of 
plaster painted black. It was captured from the 
Turks during one of their attacks on the city of 
Rhodes. Some of the old auberges of the 
Knights are still standing. These were the pal- 



MALTA. 49 

aces or inns for each nationality, where the mem- 
bers, whether knights, serving brothers, professors, 
or novices, used to live. Those that have not given 
place to the more modern buildings are now used 
for Government offices of one sort or another. 
How soon we exhausted the town ! There is 
really nothing special to be seen but the great 
church of St. John. 

It was built about 1576 by Grand Master La 
Cassiere, and was enriched by his successors. The 
pavement is composed of sepulchral slabs worked 
in a mosaic of jasper, agate, and other precious 
stones. Many a knight sleeps under these splen- 
did floors, with a panegyric flattering him in 
death. Every nation had, and has still, its sepa- 
rate chapel, running parallel with the nave, and 
here the Grand Masters are inurned in sumptuous 
state. The Portuguese knights, the Spanish, 
Austrian, Italian, French, Bavarian, and English 
have each decorated their chapels and their altars 
after their own hearts. In the English chapel is 
one old statue of wood, representing St. John. 
It was the custom of the Knights to assemble 
before this statue and implore victory on the eve 
of their national engagements. In the crypt lie 
the remains of L'lsle Adam, first commander 
of the Order in Malta, together with those of many 
others more or less famous. But for the sacrifice of 
the mass at the high altar, the worshipers, the faint 
odor of incense that pervaded the great church, I 
4 



50 MASHALLAH ! 

fear the splendid mockery of the monumental 
marble would have chilled me ; the history of 
three centuries of glory and greatness is all that 
is left in the knightly island ; a history, and 
nothing more. From the high gardens over the 
sea I looked down upon the waves that stretched 
between me and the horizon, and thought of the 
distant shore I was seeking, a shore whereon so 
brief a history as this of the Knights of Malta 
would seem like writing in the sand. I grew im- 
patient at our delay, and found the venders of 
fretted silver a burden, and the songs of the boat- 
boys a bore. Moreover, what if the climate 
should veer, as it does sometimes ? The winter 
is penetrating, says my history, and the summer 
is one long sirocco. Do you know what that is ? 
What says the historian? "Strangers in. Malta 
are affected, during the prevalence of the sirocco, 
with great lassitude and debility, which indis- 
poses their system, and renders it liable to suffer 
from dyspepsia. . . . Anything painted when this 
wind blows will never set well ; glue loses much 
of its adhesive property ; bright metals become 
tarnished ; and, from the dampness of the atmos- 
phere, the pavement of the street is sometimes 
quite wet." Good heavens ! Let us quit Malta 
before our "glue loses its adhesive property," or 
we go to pieces. 



ALEXANDRIA. 51 



VI. 

ALEXANDRIA. 



The sea wind fell toward daybreak and the sea 
followed shortly after. A soft gale came out of 
the east with the sun and blew off shore. What 
a very soft gale it was ! warm and dry, bearing 
the faintest possible odor of musk along with it, 
and stealing, apparently, from the heart of a great 
yellow cloud that was slowly rising under the sun. 
I wondered if it was the steam of aloes, the sort 
of thing you read of, but seldom witness ; it 
was not the smoke of a burnt-offering, nor any 
sun-painted cloud, but only desert dust swept up 
and wafted away on the fresh breeze of the morn- 
ing. The blue wayes turned pale, and broke into 
long lines of flashing foam as they crept to shore ; 
beyond the foam rose a white city, like a reef built 
out of the sea ; a few palms leaned over its shin- 
ing walls, a few domes hung like great ostrich 
eggs under those leaning palms ; a few slender 
minarets, tall tapers with crescents flaming at 
their tips, towered here and there, the loftiest ob- 
jects in all that dazzling horizon. A strange sail 
came leaping oyer the wayes to giye us welcome ; -77 
I heard unfamiliar yoices, and received a confused 
impression of color, orange and scarlet and bronze, 
draped and turbaned somebodies doing something 



52 MASHALLAH ! 

for our benefit as we steamed on toward the splen- 
did port. 

Islands with palaces, blinded to the eaves and 
filled with invisible slaves, a lighthouse, and a 
harbor crowded with shipping — all these sprang 
suddenly before us out of the blank sea, too sud- 
denly for me to fully comprehend them. We 
were shortly surrounded by a great multitude of 
boatmen. They fastened to our ship like leeches, 
and scaled our bulwarks. They swarmed on us, 
those plagues of Egypt, men and boys of every 
sort save only the right sort. We were boarded 
and taken by storm. Your sea pirates do this 
sort of thing and are hanged for it, but in Alex- 
andria the rope's end scatters them for a moment 
only, and they return afresh. I retreated into 
the cabin, where they cornered me, prostrate 
and speechless, under the hail of their deep, de- 
licious lingo. Click ! click ! down went the 
anchor into the soft beds of Egyptian mud, and 
at last we came to a dead halt in the classical 
waters of Proteus. I was in the cabin in mine 
extremity. Most of the pirates spoke a line of 
English, and each claimed me as his own. I 
was seized bodily and torn from the arms of an 
agile Greek to be folded in the embraces of a 
dusky Arab. They might have parted my gar- 
ments among them ; they nearly did. They 
might have drawn and quartered me and taken 
me on shore in sections, but I cried aloud in that 



ALEXANDRIA. 53 

last hour, " Save me, Hubert, save me ! " and the 
saving Hubert came to the front. I fell upon his 
neck, bag and baggage, and put all my trust in 
him. He was not a Greek, and that was some- 
thing in his favor ; he was an Italian, and that 
was considerably more, for I had had dealings 
with his people, and knew their ways. " Don't 
believe him ! " said a rival. " He lies ! " added a 
second. " He will cheat you ! " 

"We all cheat," chimed the chorus of forty 
thieves. Every mouth was set against him, and 
my heart sank. Then Hubert spoke in the 
honeyed tongue of his country, "Believe no one, 
but follow me!" I followed him in the wildest 
unbelief, and was carried to shore under the very 
shadow of his protecting arm. He lashed the 
fellows that beset our path to right and left ; 
abused the boatman ; scoffed at the officials who 
received us at the quay ; took possession of a car- 
riage and span, and piloted me to a French inn, 
apart from the Frank quarter, where all the 
squalid splendor of the Ottoman East was to be 
enjoyed at the lowest possible figure. Wine and 
figs restored me ; my hostess, with her hair down 
and her feet in yellow slippers, talked of Paris 
with a sigh that was tinctured with absinthe and 
cigarettes. I heard the songs of the sellers of 
sweetmeats under my window ; I saw all the 
pageant of the streets, and scented the holy and 
unholy smells that continually freight the air. 



54 MASHALLAH ! 

It was passing strange, and, unable to resist the 
charm of it, I went forth to glut my senses. Hu- 
bert clung to me like a brother, like a big brother 
who bullies you fraternally, and turns his devotion 
to profit. 

" What will you see ?" asked Hubert. 

" See ? I will see the four thousand palaces and 
the like number of baths ; superb Serapis on its 
pyramid of a hundred steps ; the Gymnasium, 
the Hippodrome, and Cleopatra's Hall of Eevels ; 
afterward take me to the pinnacle of the Panium, 
that I may view the city of fiye hundred thousand 
souls, and its fifteen miles of wall, with Necropo- 
lis by the sea below it, and Pharos in the waves 
beyond ! Show me Hypatia's home ! " 

Hubert said nothing, but passed the word to 
the black driver in a scarlet fez with a blue tassel, 
and we rocked from side to side through narrow, 
crooked streets, as unsuitable for the purposes of 
commerce as plowed soil frozen hard. 

I was dragged from point to point through all 
the city ; then out of it into the hills of sand 
where the brown-leaved date palms stood stiff- 
ly against the wind ; the cactus bristled by the 
roadside ; small caravans of camels, with Nubian 
drivers, appeared and disappeared among the des- 
ert gullies ; diminutive donkeys, burdened with 
riders who were, for the most part, ridiculously 
out of proportion, ambled over the beaten ways, 
urged on by barelegged boys with cries and cudg- 



ALEXANDRIA. 55 

els ; pilgrims, swathed in many - colored gar- 
ments ; carriages filled with Franks, more camels, 
other donkeys and Frank -laden carriages — this 
was the breathing panorama of the day. In all 
the city that has been glorious we found no re- 
maining traces of its glory. Of the twelve thou- 
sand gardens that once delighted its luxurious 
people, a single substitute offers its trim lawns to 
the health-seeking Frank, with a caution to pluck 
nothing within the railings, and to keep off the 
grass ! On the crown of a low hill stands the soli- 
tary column that perpetuates the fame of Pom- 
pey, though it was erected in honor of Diocletian. 
In the sand by the seashore the obelisk that marks 
the site of the Caesari am towers alone, for its com- 
panion, long since fallen and hidden away under 
sand drifts, buried by the kindly winds, has been 
dragged through the Text seas to England. It is 
the so-called Needle of Cleopatra ; * near it lay the 
dust of the Ptolemies and of Alexander. The 
meanest quarter of his city has crept down upon 
his tomb and obliterated it. The garden of Mo- 
harram Bey was to a certain extent a bore ; the 
thick shade of the banyan, where I sought to col- 
lect my shattered senses, gave providential shelter 
to Egyptian florists, who stole upon me in the 
fragrant silence and assaulted me with button- 

* Since this was written it has been transported to 
Few York. 



56 MASHALLAH ! 

hole bouquets. Was I not Americano, and their 
legitimate prey ? 

Hubert was in league with them ; Hubert be- 
guiled me into one snare or another every hour, 
and in each case it was quite impossible to extri- 
cate myself without his aid. Hubert kept one 
hand on his heart, the picture of fidelity, and the 
other in my pocket. This is one of the customs 
of the East not set forth in the " Arabian 
Nights." We drove by the side of still canals 
where barges swung at anchor or drifted lazily 
with sails half -filled. We saw all the fashions of 
the Empire displayed along the shore. Alexan- 
dria turned out to take the sun at his setting, to 
listen to the strains of music under the palms, to 
nod sleepily to one's friends from the luxurious 
cushions heaped in the phaetons brought over sea 
from England. Then we hastened back to town 
and haggled with the man in the fez, Hubert 
and I, and got rid of his establishment, poor as 
it was, and decrepit and threadbare, with infi- 
nite pains. I was covered with humiliation, and 
sought to drown my disappointment in a tol- 
erable brand of French claret. My dream of 
the Orient — how well that sounds — was dreamed 
out. This was not the Orient I longed for all my 
days and nights — a perfumed paradise, founded 
on the bewitching pages of Eothen and the How- 
adji. And yet everything that I saw — and I was 
continually seeing something — every object was 



ALEXANDRIA. 57 

exactly as I expected it to be, and I lost all hope 
of receiving a sensation. 

Twenty minutes on shore made this fact clear 
to me. I lounged into a cafe toward bedtime, re- 
solving to be as comfortable as most foreigners are 
who are cast alone among strangers, and heard 
the perambulating organs that grind upon the 
heels of civilization, and tease the ear of him who 
listens for the angelic harmony of silence, even 
though he fly to the desert in the vain search for 
it. The organ droned out an Egyptian air from 
"Aida" in the neighboring cafe — every third 
house is the haunt of coffee-bibbers — close at 
hand reed flutes were being blown by Egyptian 
lips and fingered skillfully by untrained Egyptian 
fingers, and I must confess that, clever as Verdi's 
imitation is, it is not so pleasing as the rustic, 
fantastic, fanatical melodies that these dark min- 
strels charm out of their reeds. The first sweet 
sleep of night was forcibly broken by a series of cat- 
calls that filled me with astonishment and alarm. 
I rose from dreams in a frame of mind by no means 
worthy to be classed with those of the distin- 
guished Indian lover. Some one in the shadow 
under my casement was hooting at intervals ; per- 
haps he learned his cry from an Eastern night- 
bird unclassified in natural history ; possibly it 
was an invention of his own. I know from ex- 
perience and close study that his voice sprang out 
of the silence into a high and prolonged falsetto, 



58 MASHALLAH ! 

and, haying nearly exhausted itself on the chief 
note, it concluded with a brief flourish that 
seemed to vary from time to time, and was no 
doubt indicative of the mood of the screamer. 
His breath passed from him with such emphasis 
that for a moment the silence was intensified, and 
then he seemed to recover with an audible gulp 
and to set at once to the accumulation of strength 
for the second cry which was sure to follow short- 
ly. The serenader under my window usually 
first sounded his clarion note as if he were merely 
announcing his presence. 

A few dogs barked in the distance. Some 
one moved stealthily by on the other side of the 
street, and then all was still again. Once more 
the cry ascended from the pavement, but this 
time there was a touch of impatience in it, and 
the concluding flourish was sharpened to a point. 
Anon the cry was repeated afar off ; it was not 
unlike an echo, yet some kind of intelligence 
seemed to be conveyed over the town in the pecu- 
liar emphasis which was given it. Now my par- 
ticular nightingale flew into the air with a trium- 
phant peal ; echo at once responded, and seemed 
to be drawing nearer every moment. At last 
they met, these two clamorous birds of night, and, 
as they passed under the faint ray of a street-lamp 
that swung from a shed over the way, I saw that 
they wore the impressive livery of the gendarmes 
of the East. The mystery was solved ; they were 



ALEXANDRIA. 59 

the night police, and, as the whole race is given to 
much sleeping, it becomes necessary for these 
watchful ministers of the public peace to keep 
one another and themselves awake by shrieking 
over the roofs from time to time. I grew famil- 
iar with that cry in all its infinite variations. I 
have heard my neighbor get wrathful because his 
challenge was unanswered, and he knew that the 
other fellow was sound asleep. I have listened to 
the more distant call twice or thrice repeated in 
various degrees of indignation, yet all the while 
my watchman reposed peacefully. When he 
awoke, which he did ultimately — for who shall be 
suffered to dream out his dream in the teeth of 
these thief-frighteners ? — he shook off his drowsi- 
ness, and responded with such vigor that there 
was conscious guilt betrayed in the very tone of 
his voice. I began with hating and scorning, but 
I ended by loving these gentle caterwaulers. 

We were all of us restless. Often I should 
have enjoyed shrieking myself, but I was not in 
voice ; they entertained me, and their changeful 
moods were a perpetual study. Sometimes three 
or four of them lifted up their voices in con- 
cert, and the town seemed alive with them ; 
sometimes a whole hour would pass in absolute 
silence, and I knew that they were all asleep, and 
was glad for their sakes, and for the sakes of all 
parties concerned, that it was as it was. Again and 
again has the voice of my watcher sought to make 



60 MASHALLAH ! 

itself audible when the effort was only half suc- 
cessful, for the cry was swallowed up in a sigh, 
and no one heard it but myself — and I wasn't 
going to tell. I have known him to utilize a 
yawn and try to pass it for the genuine article, 
but he usually failed in this effort. Sometimes 
he dreamed, and made a hideous attempt to arouse 
his comrade in the next block. It was like the 
utterances of those who talk in their sleep, the 
unintelligible mouthings of an idiot, or the vague 
and rapid mutterings of one insane. That was 
the sort of thing that shook the nerves of Lady 
Macbeth, and I was happier when the old fellow 
under the window came suddenly to the surface 
with a startled but defiant crow that seemed the 
herald of the new-born day. A second day's 
wanderings among the streets of Alexandria de- 
veloped no, new impressions. 

The pictures of Oriental life familiar to my 
eyes from childhood were realized ; the indolent 
sippers of coffee and sherbet, the indefatigable 
smokers of the nargileh and the chibouk, the 
sellers of fruit and candy who build pyramids of 
their wares, and sit in the shade of a palm branch 
inviting custom with songs descriptive of the joys 
of fruit-eating and sugar-sucking, the pestilential 
donkey-boys, who follow the foreigners like sum- 
mer flies, the camels stalking through the streets 
or kneeling in front of the bazars to be laden or 
unladen — all these sights were repeated again and 



ALEXANDRIA. 61 

again. Clumsily clad women waddled in the 
middle of the street, and were shrieked at by 
drivers who claimed the right of way ; these 
women always waddle and look over the ridges of 
their black veils with soft, expressionless eyes 
rimmed round with dark lines of kohl. Often I 
stopped in the shelter of a palm grove — there are 
few enough in Alexandria, but they are most in- 
viting — and took note of the trifling events that 
made up the life of the people. A boy's quarrel, 
a dog fight, a dispute over a bargain, a wandering 
minstrel singing or chanting to the monotonous 
accompaniment of the two-stringed lute — each 
and all of these were of sufficient moment to at- 
tract an audience. Egyptian, Nubian, Turk, 
Maltese, Algerine, Greek, Darweesh, Frank, and 
Friar, they gather from all quarters and loiter in 
the sun until even this slight episode has come to 
an end, and there is nothing left them but coffee 
and tobacco. My attention was attracted at last, 
when even a palm shadow grew oppressive, and 
my lips refused sherbet ; I was delighted to dis- 
cover a commotion at the lower end of the street, 
a commotion that fairly blocked the way, and 
was slowly creeping up toward the palm garden 
where I stood. 

There was wailing in the air, and the sharp, 
shrill screams of women rose at intervals ; a pro- 
cession of men, bearing over their heads a rude 
bier, pushed its way out of the throng and quick- 



02 MASHALLAH ! 

ened its pace as it drew near ; the bier, having a 
tall head-board, was entirely covered with a shawl, 
and from the top of the head-board dangled cer- 
tain head ornaments worn by Eastern women, and 
including a couple of long, false braids of silk 
that are fastened in the hair. The fair Ophelia 
was going to her grave preceded by a band of 
blind old men who wagged their heads in the sun 
and cried repeatedly, " There is no god but God, 
and Mohammed is his Prophet." After these 
hired chanters came the male relatives of the de- 
ceased, but the females followed the bier. The 
hired mourners hovered in the rear ; they laughed, 
ogled the wayfarers over their heavy, black veils, 
chattered, jostled one another, yet turned again 
to their duty, and screamed with a piercing tre- 
molo, or with short, sharp cries that rang pain- 
fully upon the ear. Many bystanders joined in 
the procession ; it is thought well of a man if he 
helps to swell a funeral pageant. I joined these 
volunteers, and was crowded in among the chil- 
dren of the Prophet. I was pushed from one side 
of the street to the other and regarded with jealous 
eyes, and finally refused admittance to the cem- 
etery, where the graves lay close together, and 
the multitudes of white or painted headstones, 
many of them having carved fezes or turbans on 
them, glowed and glistened in the sun. Clouds 
of sand blew over the walls and drifted among the 
tombs. The funeral procession paused for a few 



THE DELTA. 63 

moments at the open grave ; the old men wagged 
their heads and called on Allah ; the women 
screamed, and then every one turned back into 
the city, sipped coffee and smoked until the tran- 
quil mind had dismissed all thoughts of death, 
and only the beloved sat in the deserted house, 
and wailed in "the night of desolation," for the 
soul is supposed to lodge in the body four and 
twenty hours after death. Therefore he sat alone 
in his house, wailing through the night of desola- 
tion for the soul that was passing to its everlast- 
ing habitation. 

Why tarry longer this side of Cairo ? thought 
I, and the next morning took train and steamed 
across the Delta. As for Alexandria, once the 
wonder of the world, it has been rubbed out and 
begun again. 



VII. 

THE DELTA. 



The last glimpse of Alexandria from the rail- 
way station in the extreme west of the town is 
not calculated to inspire a feeling of regret at 
quitting this gateway of the East. The white 
city glares in the sun ; everything comes to a 
sudden and a rather ugly termination. There are 
new buildings slowly rising and old ones are 
slowly crumbling away. The stonecutters chip- 



64 MASHALLAH ! 

ping at their blocks ; the masons tapping with 
their trowels ; the complaining camels waiting to 
be relieved of their burdens, as they stagger under 
the loads that are hung to their humps on either 
side, or drop down on their knees as if they were 
going all to pieces ; the cries of the laborers as 
they pull at the ropes and swing the great blocks 
of yellow stone in place — this is the last glimpse 
you have of the famous port of Egypt as you are 
about to set forth on your journey across the Isth- 
mus of Suez. The station is a fine one, and the 
accommodations not to be complained of, yet it 
seemed to me that the building was out of place, 
and that it needed the management of foreign 
hands to keep it in good condition. 

Sand drifted everywhere. A multitude of 
travelers wandered to and fro under the unpaved 
corridors and through the rooms, seeming not to 
know what to do with themselves. Coffee, wines, 
cigars, and cakes were served you on little tables 
planted almost anywhere. While I sat with my 
heels buried in the very edge of the desert, native 
bootblacks haunted me with just English enough 
at their disposal to make it necessary for them to 
dispose of it a thousand times over. Volunteer 
porters seized upon my portmanteau every five 
minutes, and it became necessary to deposit it in 
the next room before they were persuaded to turn 
their attention to some fresher arrival. The 
ticket-seller seemed to take it as an unkindness 



THE DELTA. 65 

on the part of the traveling public that his medi- 
tations in the rear of the office were so frequently 
and so inconsiderately disturbed. We were all 
locked out of the platform until the last moment, 
and then hurried into our respective carriages by 
guards, who overpowered if they did not humble 
us with their air of authority. All these officials 
were Turks and Moslems ; the Christian dogs, who 
have had their day in the cradle of their creed, 
are for the most part now looked upon as intruders, 
though they travel first class and scatter money 
with foolish generosity as they go. The express 
train from Alexandria to Cairo does the one hun- 
dred and thirty-one miles in four and a half hours. 
I selected the accommodation train as preferable — 
two hours extra were not too many in a land that 
I have come to see. A bell rang in the station, 
and I turned to the window, happy in the thought 
that I was at last on my way to Cairo. A few 
people came, out of the many that were lounging 
on the platform of the station, and took seats in 
the train. As we didn't start immediately, they 
alighted and resumed their cigarettes. Again the 
bell rung and yet again, and it was apparently a 
mere accident that finally set us in motion, and 
only then did the last passenger step rather brisk- 
ly to the edge of the platform and clutch the 
train in good earnest, and with a look of sur- 
prise. I know not how many times we halted out 
in the brown desert, among the marshes and be- 
5 



66 MASHALLAH ! 

side green pools of standing water, and along the 
grassy prairies of the Delta. I have a recollection 
of bells that seemed to ring for no earthly reason 
save to flatter us into the belief that we were 
starting or about to start. As we ran along the 
shores, the low, marshy shores of Lake Mareotis, 
which old Strabo called a sea, the desolation of 
the scene removed the disappointment and regret 
that I experienced in Alexandria when I was 
looking in vain for some trace of its original splen- 
dor. When Strabo's sea was covered with galleys, 
when greater riches flowed into Alexandria from 
this still water than from the great sea to the 
west, so that the fairest portion of the city lay 
among these marshes, did no oracle predict that 
the hour would come when the stork and the 
pelican would stretch their necks among the wav- 
ing reeds, and the wild duck wing its arrowy 
flight over the deserted wastes, unmolested save 
by the occasional flash of an Englishman's rifle ? 
On each side of the road small Arab villages are 
literally squatting in the sun. At the first glance, 
it is difficult to imagine them inhabited by human 
beings ; mud walls as high as your head, bent 
into every possible angle, covered with flat roofs 
of straw and all kinds of refuse, perforated here 
and there with small doors, each door leading into 
a separate habitation, but the effect of the whole 
being utterly confusing until you have entered 
and explored a specimen village. 



THE DELTA. 67 , 

These villages are continually compared to 
enormous wasps' nests, and I can think of no 
comparison more striking. They swarm with 
half -naked Arabs and stark-naked children ; with 
fowls and bleating flocks and braying donkeys. 
Overhead the pigeons whirl in clouds, for they 
are prized for their guano, the chief fuel of the 
country. Sometimes a date palm stands alone in 
the midst of a mud-brown village, and seems to 
apologize for it with its stately stem and all its 
lovely leaves ; without the palm the village is 
sure to sink into insignificance, for you seldom 
find mosque, dome, or a minaret in so small a 
community. Sometimes a camel stands with 
its homely and awkward legs spread out and its 
scornful nose in the air, as if it could not find 
words to express its contempt for these habitations 
of man — and probably it can't ! Out of the hem 
of the desert the cotton fields begin to show their 
little bolls of snow ; the corn spreads its mantle 
over the land, and on every side of us we see the 
drawers of water dropping their leathern buckets 
into small canals, and swinging them shoulder- 
high over into the gutters that feed the planted 
fields. The whole country seems to be awakening 
from its drowsy, desert dream as we approach the 
Delta. The clover creeps off into the desert, all 
the meadows are threaded with arteries through 
which the water actually pulsates, for every toss 
of the skin-bucket over the shoulders of the swart 



68 MASHALLAH ! 

laborer who toils from dawn to dusk sends a wave 
leaping from end to end. Stay the hand of that 
human water-mill, and the dry tongue of the 
desert will lap up the last drop of moisture from 
the meadows and creep down day by day until it 
has touched the sea. They feed one upon the 
other — Egypt and the Egyptian ; cut the ligature 
that binds them together, body to body, and the 
bones of the one will be ground into the sand of 
the other. 

At Tantah, a veritable city, with mosques, and 
minarets, and bazars, and caravans, and a great 
annual fair that is one of the sights of Egypt — at 
Tantah I gave thanks for a deliverance out of the 
disappointment and despondency that I had suf- 
fered at Alexandria. Tantah is alive with all the 
elements of the East that as yet have not been di- 
luted, as they certainly are at Alexandria. Tantah 
has its saint, too, a marvelous fellow — by the by, 
they call a fellow a fellah in this country — who 
must have been a giant in his day, for the Mos- 
lems call on him in their distress ; and, in the 
midst of a storm, when in danger of an accident 
or in great trouble of any sort, it is the correct 
thing to cry, "Ya seyyid, ya Bedawee!" He 
was a Bedawee. On his return from Mecca he 
passed through Tantah, liked it, established him- 
self there, and there he died, about six centuries 
ago. An hour before daybreak the muezzin, 
leaning from the starlit gallery of his minaret, 



THE DELTA. 69 

calls, in a loud, clear yoice, on Seyyid Ahmed-el- 
Bedawee, and his name is coupled with "all the 
favorites of God," by the united voices of these 
prayer-callers over the roofs of the infidel East. 
Happy Tantah ! Thrice in the year she is flood- 
ed with pilgrims, who come hither to pray at the 
tomb of St. Seyyid. As many as two hundred 
thousand are in the field at once. While cara- 
vans of merchandise are heaped in her streets, 
the very air is laden with spices ; all the pictur- 
esque people of the desert and the mountains 
pitch their tents about her borders. Armies 
of camels wag their flabby lips and switch their 
ridiculous tails in dumb contentment so long 
as the fair lasts ; but, on the ninth day, they 
cry out against their master as they kneel to 
be reladen, and then, with long strides, they 
set their faces toward home, and Tantah sub- 
sides into summer and a furnace heat. At 
Tantah we are in the land of Goshen. We might 
have guessed it from the delicious green of the 
juicy grasses, from the fragrant gardens, the 
flowering almonds, the blossoming beans, the fre- 
quent palms, the tamarisks — that sacred tree of 
Osiris — and from the orange groves that are not far 
distant, the groves that glut the market of Cairo. 
We have crossed one branch of the Nile, almost 
without looking at it, for we wish to come upon 
it decently and in order at Cairo, where the Nile 
fleets are moored. We crossed it by an iron 



70 MASHALLAH ! 

bridge that would not seem out of place were it 
spanning the Thames, but here it is a two-mil- 
lion-dollar innovation, yery convenient, no doubt, 
though one hates to find too many home com- 
forts on the wrong side of the globe. But for the 
accident which resulted in the death of the Khe- 
dive's elder brother in 1856, when the train on 
which he was returning from Alexandria to Cairo 
by night was run over the bank into the river in- 
stead of on to a ferryboat which should have been 
there to receive it — but was not — but for this ca- 
lamity, which hastened the present Viceroy to the 
throne, we might still have had fifteen minutes 
of Nile life in our trip across the isthmus. Let 
us bide our time. Have we not eaten of the Yus- 
sef Effendi mandarins, fresh from the orchards of 
Benha ? They are the juiciest and most golden 
of all the Egyptian fruits, and the lips of the 
Cairenes are never so musical as when moist with 
their dew. 

Benha-el-Assal, Benha-of-honey, where are 
your comb-builders, your burly bees, that they 
leave the Egyptian bread sour and dry when it 
should be sweet and toothsome, for it is hardly 
earned ? Alas ! for the bees of Benha, whose 
fame has given birth to a proverb, they have 
swarmed in some undiscovered country, some oa- 
sis perchance, where they give new life to the 
parched lips and fainting hearts of desert pilgrims 
who have kept their treasure secret. Benha falls 



THE DELTA. 71 

back on her mandarins, and is still hailed with 
delight whenever the train comes in. At every 
station between Alexandria and Cairo, the trains 
are visited by regiments of fruit-, beer-, and water- 
sellers. Everybody bargains ; nearly everybody 
buys something at thrice its market value. Such 
big, sleepy eyes as are turned up to us from over 
the solemn black veils of the women ; such white 
teeth as flash on us from between the plump 
laughing lips of the children ; round arms, high, 
proud bosoms, but half concealed by dark blue 
robes with a thread of silver woven in their hem ; 
full-blossomed youth, old age withered and woe- 
begone, dark skins and fair ones, ebony Nubians, 
pale waifs with the mark of the Frank indelibly 
impressed in form and feature, and all of them, 
every single soul, crying and beseeching " Back- 
sheesh ! " At first it amuses you, this perpetual 
teasing of a whole race ; then you grow tired of 
it, and after that comes a dread of the very word 
that is sure to shut your heart and your purse 
against the beggar who utters it. Yet they can not 
be blamed. They would give as much, no doubt, 
as you give them were you to change places with 
them. Already the poverty of Egypt begins to 
stare me in the face. A starving people, who eat 
little, and so very little that it is a marvel that 
they live and flourish on it, have a right to ask aid 
of the well-to-do Howadji who visits their country 
for the mere pleasure of the hour. He is their 



72 MASHALLAH I 

only source of revenue, and, without the mite 
which he throws them from time to time (there 
is small danger of his doing it too often), they 
would suffer the lash or the bastinado at the 
hands of the Khedive's officials, who are sent 
through the country like locusts to seize upon the 
major part of all that is good. Little creatures 
under the window, with copper wristlets and 
dangling ear-rings strung with bits of copper 
coin, poised their porous water-jars in the palms 
of their hands, and held their hands over their 
shoulders in exquisitely graceful postures. They 
took the copper rings from their ears and tore the 
copper bands from their wrists and offered us the 
handful for a few francs. The trinkets were not 
worth as many sous, and with patience and perse- 
verance they would have given them to you at 
your own price, but it served to assure me that 
their cries for backsheesh were inspired by some- 
thing more worthy of attention than the com- 
plaints of most beggars. These people will work 
for a mere trifle, and work as no one else can 
work in this climate. Their wage is ridiculously 
small, and yet, spite of their toil, their hopeless, 
lifelong toil, they sing as the birds sing the whole 
day through ; and their laugh is so hearty and 
frequent that, if you choose to, you can believe 
that they are as well provided for as yourself. 
Meanwhile, the lame, the halt and the blind work 
their way to the front, and, give them as little as 



THE DELTA. 73 

you choose or give nothing, they will laugh in 
their luxurious sunshine and sing the everlasting 
song of happy indifference to fate. I am told 
that their creed has much to do with this com- 
mendable spirit of resignation. It is certainly 
not common with Christians. I believe we do 
not, as a general thing, carol to any extent on 
an empty stomach. But I am forgetting the 
Pharaohs. As we whirled too rapidly through 
the green meadows of Goshen, I fell into a con- 
versation with a fellow passenger, an Englishman 
in a fez, which indicated that the wearer was 
either long a resident of the East, or had just ar- 
rived : having heard many interesting facts in his 
experience, though, like an Englishman, he was to 
a very great extent involved in a kind of hallowed 
mystery, I was surprised and amused to find my 
unknown companion a man of considerable im- 
portance in the district where he alighted from 
the train. A company of distinguished Moslems 
awaited his advent and received him with pro- 
found salaams ; one of them kissed his hand with 
great reverence and bowed his forehead upon the 
back of the hand, where he retained it a moment. 
A superb horse, I may safely call it a steed on 
this soil, was in readiness, and when my late com- 
panion was seated in a saddle that blazed with 
gold embroidery, and with its scarlet tassels dan- 
gling almost to the heels of the charger, several 
attendants mounted the national donkeys, and he 



74 MASHALLAH ! 

departed amid the repeated salaams of the com- 
pany. I suppose I shall never discover who or 
what he was ; no one on the train, with whom I 
spoke, had any knowledge of him. 

The interest of the hour was beginning to flag 
when a cry rang through the train from end to 
end ; the whole passenger list sprang suddenly to 
the windows ; on our right, there in the horizon, 
over the gardens of the Cairenes, between the palm 
groves on the edge of the desert, beyond the broad 
line of yellow sand, loomed the Pyramids ! From 
that moment my heart thumped like an engine. 
On both sides of the way, far off in the horizon, 
rose the high drifts of desert sand. The banana 
and the palm spring close besides us. The me- 
nagerie — camels, horses, asses, buffalo — that never 
ceases to delight so long as Egypt holds you in 
your right mind, threaded all the winding roads ; 
in the grass by the wayside white ibises were feed- 
ing, as fearless as barnyard fowls. Then a glim- 
mer of flat roofs and swelling domes, of towering 
minarets and twinkling crescents, all in a sunset 
flash. The tumult of the arrival, the rapid drive 
through a city I could at that moment have called 
Paris, or anything, it is so Frankified up by the 
station, and then the shadow of narrow streets 
roofed over, the glamour and the glory of the 
East, just for five minutes to have had my Ara- 
bian Tales so illustrated is worth a lifetime of 
aimless wandering. A narrow lane between tall 



GRAND CAIRO. 75 

buildings, a lane that seemed endless, and with 
all its turns for nothing, and then — a hammock 
under the palms in a hidden garden in the moon- 
light, and around me the broad verandas of the 
most charming hotel in Cairo ! 



VIII. 

GRAND CAIRO. 



Hotel du Nil, Cairo. 
My first night in Cairo was so like a chapter 
out of the "Arabian Tales," that I could scarcely 
belieye my eyes as I strolled about and met the 
Enchanted Princess, the Slave of Love, the Cal- 
enders, the Three Sisters, and the Barber with all 
his brothers. The garden of the hotel but half 
dispelled the charm of my new life, for as a gar- 
den it is worthy to be named in story, if but the 
moon looks over the high roof of the house ad- 
joining, and covers the palms with glory. Birds 
start from their sleep and mutter among the 
branches ; the mummies' cases that stand at the 
top of the broad avenue look as if they could make 
astounding revelations if they but chose to break 
the silence of three thousand years. The croco- 
dile that is suspended under the veranda stirs in 
the light breeze, and seems alive again, and a pet 
monkey drops suddenly into your lap as you 



76 MASHALLAH ! 

lounge in one of the arbors, your cigar alight, 
and your soul at peace with all the world. The 
kiosk in the center of the garden is stored with 
the latest journals. Here the loyal Britisher 
reads his " Times/' and the American abroad 
turns fondly to his favorite ; but for the English 
one hears and the traveling suits one sees, the 
garden might pass for an oasis in the sand and 
the dust of the city. Our servants are mostly 
natives. We go to our doors and windows when 
we are in need of service, clap our hands thrice in 
a melodramatic manner, and receive an imme- 
diate response from some corner of the garden ; 
we give our orders in Italian or French, and are 
obeyed in silence. The cool, delicious air of the 
early morning woos us from our sleep ; we take 
our coffee and our rolls at any hour we choose, 
and this light refreshment lasts until midday, 
when breakfast is served in state. Of course, we 
have been busy sight-seeing and are inclined to 
talk with our neighbor, exchanging impressions 
and forming new plans. In the afternoon we 
doze ; for, though the Cairo winter is not by any 
means hot, we find it pleasanter to rest when the 
sun is overhead, and to set out afresh toward 
evening, when the city is seen to the best advan- 
tage. 

The Khedive, with an affectation of the spirit 
of reform which delights the superficial observ- 
er, although the advantages of that reformation 



GRAND CAIRO. 77 

seem to touch him solely while they entirely es- 
cape his people — the Khedive is rapidly trans- 
forming Cairo into a kind of spurious Paris. The 
Saracenic walls are pounded into powder ; the 
narrow, winding lanes — you can hardly call them 
streets, they are so narrow and so crooked — are 
being broadened and straightened ; the brown 
tints of the old houses are covered over with a 
whitewash that glares unpleasantly in the bright 
sunshine. The newer suburbs are filled with 
villas in the midst of dusty gardens that might as 
well locate themselves in some French city, for 
they look out of place in Egypt, and rob the 
country of much of its picturesqueness. All 
the hotels are utterly modern ; pass the great 
ugly stone front of the new hotel opposite the 
Ezbekeeyah, once a grove where the Moslems 
sipped coffee and smoked the nargileh, and now a 
hideous artificial garden with a high iron fence 
about it, and you will see the kiosk before the 
chief entrance filled with pleasure- or health-seek- 
ing foreigners, who assume the Oriental languor 
and the fez immediately upon their arrrival, and 
burden themselves with both during the few 
weeks of their stay in a country they never get 
used to. Shepherd's Hotel, not far removed, and 
in the heart of the reformed quarter of the city, 
is another spectacle for gods and donkey-boys. 
Thomas Cook & Son's traveling caravans pour into 
Shepherd's from time to time ; they are an uneasy, 



78 MASHALLAH ! 

ill-assorted, "personally conducted" lot ; they go 
forth in a body and do up the town sights by 
machinery, and Heaven protect the conscientious 
traveler whose track lies in their wake ! 

This is not the Cairo I have dreamed of ; even 
the fine fellow with his turban wound gracefully 
about his head, only the scarlet top of his tarboosh 
visible, and his long garments of various colors, 
that wrap him from shoulder to feet, even this 
man, who has fabrics of silver and gold and 
camel's hair, and the soft, embroidered tissues of 
Persia for sale, can not make me forget that I 
am in the midst of foreigners, who have brought 
hither the atmosphere of the very countries I have 
lately fled from. There are the sellers of scented 
water, who carry their refreshing drink in huge 
jars of porous clay strapped to their backs ; the 
mouth of the vessel is often filled with flowers ; 
the long spout that curls over their shoulder 
shoots out its delicious stream when the vender 
stoops over and holds his brazen cup in front of 
him to receive it. They are capital shots, these 
watermen. Those of the poorer class carry water 
in goat-skin sacks, with a long brass stem, the 
mouth of which they stop with their thumbs. 
These water-carriers have two brazen cups, and it 
is their custom to go about the streets clashing 
the cups together like cymbals. The pipe-cleaners, 
the itinerant barbers who shave their customers 
on the curbstones, if there be one, or under a 



GRAND CAIRO. 79 

tree ; the soothsayers, dressed in rags and read- 
ing fortunes in a handful of cowry shells, coppers, 
and colored beads ; the necromancers and snake- 
charmers, and men with dancing monkeys, and 
boys with great, fat lizards for sale ; the women 
in their sacks of silk, and their veils that are held 
as high as the bridges of their noses by bamboo 
bowsprits that shoot up to the roots of their hair, 
and are fastened in their head gear ; the harem 
beauties in stylish broughams with an English 
driver and a eunuch on the box ; the sons of the 
Khedive driving out, each in his own establish- 
ment, and just such a one as would cause no 
comment in Hyde Park during the season ; the 
Khedive himself in a handsome carriage, with a 
brace of swift-footed, sleek-limbed sais, glorious 
in gold-embroidered jackets, flowing, snow-white 
skirts, and sleeves that spread like wings, in jaunty 
tarbooshes with tossing tassels half a yard in 
length, running forty paces in advance of the 
horses and clearing the crowded streets ; a half- 
dozen mounted attendants, and nothing more — 
not even so much as a recognition from the pop- 
ulace who are crowded close upon the hoofs 
of his horses — all these elements of Oairene 
daily life, delightful as they are, can not cause 
me to overlook the fact that Cairo is slowly but 
surely going to the dogs — the Christian dogs, I 
mean ! 

I did once succeed in losing myself. I was 



80 MASHALLAH ! 

on foot and quite alone, which, accounts for it. 
With infinite difficulty I had escaped the impor- 
tuning donkey-boys, and was strolling from one 
street to another, past numberless mosques and 
drinking-fountains and enticing coffee-shops. I 
lost all track of my countrymen ; there wasn't a 
cork hat (like an inverted washbowl), or a white 
umbrella, or a pair of canvas shoes to be seen. 
Even the donkey and his master seemed to have 
dissolved into thin air. I passed through great 
street gates, such as shut the residents of the 
various quarters of the town each in his own quar- 
ter, and saw the mud-brown houses that as yet 
have not grown white at the approach of the in- 
novator, whose stories crept out over the street, 
farther and farther the higher they get, and where 
the roofs of the opposite houses almost meet at 
last. These streets were very shady, and very cool 
and quiet. Many an eye was turned on me in 
surprise, and when I had at last come into a re- 
mote quarter beyond half a dozen streets, and 
found myself suddenly surrounded by a mob of 
half-grown boys, who were evidently unaccus- 
tomed to intruders, I was forced to make as 
speedy a retreat as possible, followed by a shower 
of stones. The gates, which are closed at evening, 
make separate cities of these several quarters. If 
you wish to pass from one quarter to another after 
dark, you must take your lantern and summon 
the gatekeeper, who responds and carefully locks 



GRAND CAIRO. 81 

you out afterward. Gas-lamps are unknown in 
that end of Cairo, and white faces a novelty. I 
was an hour or more working my way out of the 
unchristian latitudes, climbing out, as it were, by 
the minarets, in each of which I fancied I saw a 
resemblance to the one that stands within earshot 
of our hotel. All foreigners either ride or drive in 
Cairo, but I got more experience in that one walk 
than I could have gathered with the aid of fifty 
donkeys. 

One comes in from the streets weary and dust- 
covered. The after-breakfast hour in the shade 
of our garden, with a mouthful of thick, black 
coffee, in a cup about the size of an egg-shell, 
a cigarette and an easy-chair, is as precious as 
almost any in the day. It is then that the vener- 
able Bedawee who for ever haunts us draws forth 
from his coarse camel's-hair cloak a handful of 
scarabse, and assures us in good English that they 
are genuine antiques, and not base imitations. 
The magician arrives and performs clever tricks, 
after each of which he begs a trifle ; nothing short 
of a shilling satisfies him, and he is apt to turn 
on his heel and depart in disgust before his reper- 
toire is half exhausted. Yesterday a little fellow, 
who was awaiting patronage by the hotel garden 
gate, cried out to me, "Want to see snakes, 
Howadji ? " and the next moment he emptied a 
bag of sluggish reptiles at my feet, and began 
twining them about his neck and arms. That boy 
6 



82 MASHALLAH I 

goes to sleep in the afternoon with his bag of 
snakes for a pillow. 

As the day begins to wane, if it be Friday or 
Sunday, we, the time-killers of Cairo, hasten to 
the Shoobra, and for two hours or more drive up 
and down one of the strangest avenues under the 
sun. The Shoobra road leads from Cairo to the 
village of Shoobra, about four miles distant. It 
is as straight as an arrow, and is bordered by syca- 
more, fig, and acacia trees. The dense boughs 
are interlocked above it. Palaces and villas are 
scattered here and there, and on each side you 
look off upon great meadows, dotted with ibises 
and sprinkled with palms, and see in the horizon 
the summits of the Pyramids. All that is lovely 
and unlovely in Cairo finds its way to the Shoo- 
bra ; the beauties and the beasts, the princes, 
the beggars, the idols of the harem, donkey-boys, 
foreigners, camel trains, and the odds and ends 
of humanity. You drive up one side of the way 
and down the other, ogling and being ogled to 
your heart's content. The fat gentleman in Euro- 
pean costume, with a tarboosh and a half-dozen 
mounted attendants, is the Khedive. In that 
close carriage, under the protection of a eunuch 
on a splendid horse, are two of his favorite wives 
— milk-white Circassian beauties with their faces 
swathed in snowy folds of gauze ; the exquisite 
carmine lips, even the faint rose-tint of the cheek, 
are visible through this coquettish mask ; high- 



GRAND CAIRO. 83 

arched eyebrows and eyes as black as night are 
busy with the world they know so little of. 
Lovely beyond description are these slaves, but in 
spite of this dazzling loveliness you can see that 
it is chiefly artificial. The eyebrows are painted ; 
the eyelids are tipped with kohl, and a dark line 
extending from the outer corners of the eyes makes 
them seem much larger than they are. That 
white skin is softened and made whiter with pow- 
der ; the flush of the cheek and the glow of the 
lips have been heightened for the occasion, and all 
the gauze that covers the forehead like a turban, 
and the lower part of the face like a transparent 
mask, adds immensely to the brilliancy of these 
feminine charms. With white camels'-hair shawls, 
covered with rich gold embroidery, lemon-colored 
kids, a Parisian fan, the light of the harem is suf- 
fered to blaze upon the world for a brief hour, but 
she must stop within her prison like a gorgeous 
tropical flower under glass, or that light will be 
put out ! Two, three, a half-dozen carriages, and 
some of them having three or four veiled beauties 
in them, wheel slowly by ; a eunuch to each — a 
brutal-looking thing he is — and there you have 
some of the more favored of the wives at the 
mercy of your eyes. You may look as earnestly 
as you choose and you will not out-stare them ; 
smile even, and the chances are they will hide a 
smile in their fans. Ya Mahomet ! is your harem 
stored with fleshpots such as these ? Look well, 



84 MASHALLAH ! 

for you can not look long ; the carriage rolls away, 
you are dazed for a moment, but for a moment 
only, for in the muffled rumble of those wheels 
you are delivered from the snare of splendid 
eyes. 

On the Shoobra you are best able to classify 
Oairenes. You at once detect and throw out the 
tourist, who is here for the season only. What is 
left, then, if we do not consider the natives of the 
East ? A few Italians, who may be either spurious 
counts or tenors in the opera ; some Greeks, full 
of cunning and conceit, not a few members of the 
ballet corps, and the over-dressed and under-bred 
ladies who pass for countesses, but who are more 
likely to have graduated from the velocipedes in 
the cafe cliantants of Paris and Vienna. On our 
return to town, swarms of the sais are in waiting, 
for they are not allowed on the fashionable drive. 
They spring lightly in front of the horses, wave 
their wands, and, as if by magic, the way opens 
before them. These runners are the most grace- 
ful and picturesque people of this race ; they 
are as light-footed as gazelles ; their muscles are 
of fine steel, elastic and bounding. They tire out 
a horse, and show no fatigue after they have run 
for hours, but they come to their graves while the 
dew of their youth is still moist and their upper 
lips are scarcely darkened with down. 

We go to the citadel at sunset, climbing up the 
long hill to the bluff on which it stands. The 



GRAND CAIRO. 85 

mosque of Mahomet Ali, the minarets of which give 
the first welcome to the stranger as he approaches 
Cairo, is at your back. You lean from the parapet 
that crowns an abrupt cliff, three hundred feet 
above the plain below. The glare has gone out of 
the sky, and a soft, transparent shadow seems to 
be floating in the air, a silvery-blue veil through 
which every object visible in the plain is idealized. 
The thousands of flat roofs swarm with those who 
have come out upon the housetops to enjoy the 
twilight ; the mosque domes look as light and airy 
as bubbles ; minarets and stately palms pierce the 
delicious air ; so still is everything that the great 
cemetery beneath you, with its domed tombs 
and walls and narrow streets, and memorial stones 
that resemble men at this distance — the dead city 
seems one with the living city, and both are silent 
under the sheltering wing of night. From the 
citadel you track the Nile for miles, with its broad 
green hem, its palms and pyramids, and the white 
flocks of its barges drifting to and fro. There is 
the desert, that sea of sand stretching its tawny 
waves to the horizon, as vast, as mysterious, as 
solemn as night itself. A little shiver slides down 
your spine ; it is time to be getting down into the 
town again, for the evening is chilly. What re- 
mains ? The opera in the evening, in the handsome 
house that was built as if by magic in the short 
space of five months, and was ready for the open- 
ing fetes of the Suez Canal in 1869 ; " Aida," on 



86 MASHALLAH ! 

its native boards, with remarkably fine appoint- 
ments. The Khedive is in his proscenium box ; a 
couple of boxes full of sons next to him ; half a 
dozen boxes opposite closed in with thick wire 
cloth, so that you see white ghosts moving among 
the shadows like splendid cockatoos, but are un- 
able to distinguish the faces ; these are the cages 
for the harem ; the eunuchs keep the restless oc- 
cupants under lock and key. The lower boxes 
are mostly empty ; the upper circle is comfort- 
ably filled with black and brown faces, white tur- 
bans, and scarlet tarbooshes. Egyptian atten- 
dants in native costume come out and touch 
up the footlights ; it is as if a new scene in 
" Aida " were being rehearsed. This great, empty 
house, with its company of four hundred singers, 
dancers, musicians, and supernumeraries, is one 
of the evidences of that celebrated reform which 
the Khedive is working in Egypt. He sinks 
some thousands of francs per night during a long 
season of opera. The establishment has never 
paid, but all deficiencies are made up from the 
private purse of this illustrious progressionalist. 
He amuses himself with the ballet, delights the 
foreigner with his display of generosity, and gets 
much credit from the world at large for his ad- 
vanced and liberal views. Meanwhile his miser- 
able, ill -fed, thoroughly cowed slave - subjects 
supply the extra drain upon the royal purse, and 
dumbly accept an increase of taxes. Justice is an 



THE BATHS AND THE BAZAARS. 87 

excellent thing in the Old Testament, but it seems 
to have gone out of fashion on its native soil. At 
midnight the dark Mooskee is illuminated by a 
troupe of half -naked runners, who bear aloft their 
torches with flames a yard long. In the midst ol 
this flight of demons — the spectacle is startlin| 
and uncommon — the Khedive is whirled away to 
his harem, and the Mooskee is left in silence and 
deeper darkness. 



IX. 

THE BATHS AND THE BAZAARS. 

It is his voice, his pathetic and penetrating 
voice, that breaks the silence of this venerable 
land, and that song of his will recur to you again 
and again, when old Egypt shall have become a 
dim but ever-delightful memory in your life. It 
is his patient, baby face, the image of innocence, 
his soft, dark eye, with just a suggestion of mis- 
chief lurking in the corner of it, his dainty foot- 
steps that fall as lightly as " blown roses on the 
grass " ; you will recall his arch, coquettish ways, 
his childish faith in Providence that teaches him 
to bear and forbear and abide his time. This he 
does, for he can't help himself ; he is at the 
mercy of a little tyrant, who follows him like a 
fate ; the voice of his master is continually in his 



88 MASHALLAH ! 

ears, and such ears ! They are ears in which the 
echoes might increase and multiply the shrill 
piping cries of that pitiless master until the firma- 
ment seemed stuffed full of donkey boys ; it is 
then that he sets his face against heaven, and 
straightens his neck and opens his mouth, as if he 
were about to discharge a ramrod that had long 
been kept secret within him. At last the hour of 
his deliverance has come, and what an hour it is 
for all parties concerned, when the heavens seem 
likely to fall, and the earth to quake, and the 
fountains of the great deep to be broken up ! It 
was his song ; all his very own ; no other living 
creature cares to lay claim to it ; and there are 
those who are dumb, the slug, for instance, and 
the snail in her winding house — they are all voice- 
less for ever, and only because they have heard the 
chant of the Egyptian "donk," and have been 
holding their breath all these years, lest by chance, 
or in the course of nature, their song might be 
like unto his. Ah ! to have heard him, if for but 
once, and to hear him yet again as he writhes in 
his delicious agony, and gasps and gags while all 
the immeasurable melody of his melodious tribe is 
chopped off and spouted forth at each vibration of 
his ears and tail, as if it were being pumped out 
by some powerful but invisible agency — and the 
pump needed greasing. He is the glory and the 
shame of that little tyrant, his master. His shaggy 
coat is shaven as smooth as velvet. Sometimes 



THE BATHS AND THE BAZAARS. 89 

ridges of fur are left on his sides, embroideries 
that are highly picturesque ; his legs are trimmed 
so finely that he beguiles you into the belief that 
he has on two pairs of clocked stockings. He 
jingles all oyer with bells and cowry-shells, worn 
for luck. He is a study of color ; he even dyes 
his hair in some cases, and if his jacket is natu- 
rally white the chances are he will have a blue 
forehead and rose-tinted hoofs ; and when his 
great padded saddle, about the shape of a bag of 
sand, and quite as hard, is covered with a cloth of 
deep scarlet, fringed with gold, that falls over his 
tail and makes such a figure in the perpetual cir- 
cus of the Cairo streets, there is nothing more 
splendid than he, and he knows it. 

This establishment is engaged for the tour of 
the bazaars. Your donkey goes anywhere, up 
stairs or down, through a door or a window, into 
the most secret recesses of the merchants' quar- 
ters, and it is for this reason that we engage 
him. Let us hence, Ali, or whatever your name 
chances to be this morning ! I find that the 
donkey changes his name to suit the nationality 
of his rider, and perhaps the boy-master has an 
eye to the sentiment of his customer, and is 
equally obliging. Ali, who has been holding 
his diminutive beast by the bridle for the last 
two hours, now skips into the middle of the ever- 
shadowy mooskee, and with consummate skill 
manages to insert his beast between my legs, and 



90 MASHALLAH ! 

we dash off at a high rate of speed. I am 
obliged to give my attention to the saddle, for 
we are driven from side to side — Ali, donkey, 
and myself — by the dense crowd that sways 
hither and thither. Carriages drive us to the 
wall, camels step over us, other donkeys salute 
us on the wing, and meanwhile a thousand fellahs 
have cursed us for riding into their stomachs, and 
half a thousand fellahahs, the wives of the above, 
good country folk, are a little dazed with the 
gorgeousness of the city, and forget to step out of 
the way. The mooskee is always our starting point ; 
we wind our way out to the mooskee through the 
dark lane under the houses that crowd against the 
garden of our hotel. The mooskee is always in 
shadow, for the street is roofed over in the fashion 
of the bazaar, and every merchant on the two 
sides of it throws down the front of his shop, and 
admits you to the inspection of his wares as you 
sit in the saddle. Ali pilots me through the 
swarming Cairenes, and, finally, with an agile 
thrust of his shoulder, suddenly precipitates the 
donkey and me into a narrow side street that leads 
off to the bazaars. Ali is always doing something 
of this kind ; sometimes he gives a lift from be- 
hind, and I am launched on to the ears of my 
donkey. This is his way of heightening our rate 
of speed as he runs behind us, barelegged, and 
with a single garment partially enveloping his 
breast. 



THE BATHS AND THE BAZAAKS. 91 

The covered passages in the bazaar quarter 
are filled with a soft amber light that makes a 
kind of paradise of old houses that can't be very 
clean. The bazaars are numerous, but they cleave 
one to another, the silversmith to his neighbor- 
ing silversmith, the seller of spices to the other 
spice-sellers, all those of a kind squatting in a 
row, patiently waiting custom without any show 
of jealousy or even of rivalry, also without much 
energy and apparently without guile. Each shop 
is in reality a mere cabinet thrown wide open to 
the street. It is crowded with fabrics that are 
displayed only when a customer presents himself 
and prevails upon the sedate merchant, who may 
be smoking, sleeping, or at prayer on the counter, 
to allow him to bargain for his wares. Life is too 
short to admit of many purchases in a Turkish 
bazaar. You must needs talk against time and to 
no purpose whatever until the merchant discovers 
that you are not to be starved out and driven up 
to his exorbitant price by hunger or impatience ; 
he regales you with lemonade or coffee or a pipe, 
if you will ; he cheerfully displays every article 
in his shop, and gives you ample opportunity to 
examine the texture thereof, but he will not be 
persuaded to show much interest in you as a cus- 
tomer ; in fact, you are apt to feel as if the mer- 
chant had done you the greatest possible favor 
in allowing you to purchase of his stock at any 
price. 



92 MASHALLAH ! 

For hours we drift to and fro among the shady 
aisles of the bazaars from sook to sook, as the 
various quarters are called. The gold- and silver- 
smiths bring forth their treasures — barbaric orna- 
ments for head and breast and arms ; bracelets as 
thick as ropes, roughly beaten out of precious 
ores ; caskets, to be worn on chains, wherein mys- 
tical writing is concealed ; armlets, charms, rude 
rings set with great turquoises ; belts of glittering 
disks linked in and in, and necklaces of coins 
strung together in a web that covers half the 
breast. We move among merchants sitting cross- 
legged among bales of rich embroideries ; bazaars 
with millions of slippers, and nothing but slip- 
pers, visible ; perfumers, who freight the air with 
subtle odors, who have sacks of gums yawning 
before them — frankincense, myrrh, aloes, and rose- 
attar ; tobacconists, pipe-sellers, armorers, with an- 
tique Damascus blades and shields and choice 
armor of curious workmanship ; stores of oil and 
honey ; sellers of fruits and cool drinks chilled 
with snow ; cooks who keep their spits turning 
and feed the hungry mouths of these easy-going 
merchants, who send to them for their dinner 
when they grow weary of their pipe. There are 
inner rooms, or courts, hung with draperies, lit 
by the subdued light that steals through the 
painted awning of rushes, and here the carpets 
of Smyrna and the rugs of Damascus and Stam- 
boul are unrolled at your feet — bewildering bits 



THE BATHS AND THE BAZAARS. 93 

of color that make a garden of the dingy barn- 
like court. The sooks are very Babels. On cer- 
tain days auctioneers push their way through the 
crowds of customers who are nearly always to 
be found here, crying their wares from end to 
end, and followed by those who are bent upon 
bringing the bargain to a close while it is yet 
day : old lamps and new, garments that are 
fresh from the hands of the dainty needle-wo- 
man, garments that have been worn threadbare 
and faded in the fierce sunshine, and turned 
and patched and cast off, to be re-turned and 
re-patched and offered for sale in the great ba- 
zaar on auction day. The entertainment of the 
shopkeepers lasts till sunset, and then these serene 
old men rouse themselves, step down from their 
counters, put up the shutters, and wander off to 
the cafe, to digest the news of the day over the 
bubbling, the bewitching nargileh. 

The bazaars after dark are as silent and as 
solemn as the tombs of the kings on the desert 
yonder. I know a wild bazaar within whose fra- 
grant recesses lodge all the glories of the East. 
The spotted skins of leopards, as soft as satin and 
as sweet as musk, swing in the open door. On 
heaps of rugs, his turban fallen among stuffed 
lizards and chameleons, his arm thrown over the 
dull scales of a stark crocodile, and his feet in a 
bed of Indian shells, sleeps the royal merchant. 
I can not enter his treasure-house, for there is only 



94 MASHALLAH ! 

room for one, but I can tarry while lie sleeps and 
feast my eyes on such stuff as dreams are made of 
— gourds full of scarabaei, and strings of ostrich 
eggs ; some of these eggs are tattooed by cunning 
hands, and hang, like curious lamps of alabaster, 
suspended from the roof. There are musical in- 
struments of quaint form and quainter voice, in- 
laid with pearl and ivory : the poet's lute, to 
whose monotonous thrumming the improvisator 
breathes forth his sweet romances ; the darabuk- 
Jceli drum ; the tar, with its broad hoop set thick 
with jingling platters ; the sag at that clash in the 
skillful fingers of the dancing sozeeyehs. Pipe- 
bowls of painted clay, with stems a man's length, 
and mouthpieces whereon half the wealth of the 
happy smokers is expended ; great globes of price- 
less amber, set with jewels and hooped with gold — 
it is thus that the cool incense of the latakia ap- 
proaches the lips of him who gives his soul to 
peace and the extreme delight of the chibouk. 
The dark girdles of thongs, such as the Indian 
maids delight in, tufts of ostrich plumes, bows 
and arrows from Abyssinia, and carved cocoanuts 
from the groves beyond the desert — there is no- 
thing to be thought of in the marvelous pages of 
the "Arabian Nights," nothing pretty, or pecul- 
iar, or portable from the shores that front the Bay 
of Biscay to the extreme borders of Bagdad, but 
it, or a shadow of it, is tumbled into this little 
room in bewildering confusion. But the old fel- 



THE BATHS AND THE BAZAARS. 95 

low begins to waken ; let us be off, or he will 
overcome us with an inexhaustible catalogue of 
his wares. 

The safest plan is to go from the bazaars to 
the baths. Sometimes you are obliged to seek 
relief in suds and hot water, for the bazaars are 
unfortunately over-populated, and your presence 
there is pretty sure to suggest emigration to the 
least desirable members of the community. Goad- 
ed on by an itching desire for change, I direct Ali 
to hasten to the bath. Ali knows all about it, and 
orders me to dismount presently at a door that is 
by no means inviting. The donkey stands un- 
hitched where we leave him. He would stand till 
doomsday if Ali should forget to resume charge 
of him. We thread a black passage that is full of 
dust and cobwebs, and turn suddenly into a room 
paved with marble, walled with marble, and domed 
with white stone that might as well have been 
marble also. In the center of the room — a large 
square one — gushes a fountain. The dome is per- 
forated with star-shaped windows, sunk deep in the 
white and semi-transparent partitions that sepa- 
rate one from the other — a kind of alabaster 
honeycomb, with all the tints of the rainbow 
streaming through it upon the plashing fountain 
below. Ali turns me over into the hands of a 
half -naked attendant, and I am at once conducted 
up three steps into an alcove where several couches, 
standing side by side, remind me of a hospital. 



96 MASHALLAH ! 

On one of these is a Turk in the final agonies of 
disrobing. On the next a Greek has passed from 
this sorrowful world into a deep dream of some- 
thing or other. My third companion is apparently- 
just recovering from the ravages of the bath, and 
is taking the nargileh in mild doses every few 
moments. He seems to be doing well, and I am 
encouraged to proceed with my bath. Swathed in 
numerous towels, sheets, pillow-cases, etc., poised 
on wooden sandals, with very tall legs under them, 
I am led from one chamber to another, from tepid 
air into an atmosphere that sticks in my throat 
and weighs upon my chest and burns me so that 
I faint and grow nervous, and fall into the arms of 
the attendant, who dashes cold water in my face 
and smiles his soft, persuasive, sleepy Oriental 
smile. He rubs me down in a small marble cell 
filled with a rosy light, and currycombs me with 
harsh bundles of date-leaf fibers. He twists me 
in postures that are as painful as they are undig- 
nified, and then leaves me to recover. Enter a 
second slave with soap and water. I am smoth- 
ered in suds that blind me and fill my nose and 
mouth, soused from head to foot, buried an inch 
deep in soapy foam, and again left to get out of it 
the best way I can. Deserted in that slimy place, 
I find my way to a fountain in the corner of the 
room, and gradually come to the light of day once 
more. Then I am swathed in more sheeting and 
given back into the hospital ward, where the fresh 



THE BATHS AND THE BAZAARS. 97 

air makes me drunk with delight. All this while 
young Ali keeps his eyes on me and speaks a few 
words of encouragement. A slave brings a deli- 
cious sherbet chilled with snow. I know the 
physical joys of the paradise these Moslems are 
waiting for ; coffee soon follows, a mere mouth- 
ful, but enough for a sensation. From time to 
time, as I lie at length on this couch of ease, I 
drop into dreams that are somehow never out of 
hearing of the plash of the fountain under the 
dome, never out of sight of a window that opens 
upon a rose garden and admits the breath of the 
fairest of flowers. Some one wakes me to unroll 
my wrappers and to roll me again in wrappings, 
fresh and dry. Then I feel the stem of the nar- 
gileh creeping to my lips, and with monstrous 
sighs I inhale the fragrance of the bubbling pipe. 
Ali must have grown hungry at last, for he it was 
who urged me to resume the duties of life, and 
with the aid of an attendant or two I did it. The 
barber brushed me, the boy of the bath brought 
me a rose that was a little overblown, and dusted 
me vaguely, as if it were a matter of little mo- 
ment, which it was, and then I went back into 
the world feeling lighter every way — in heart, in 
head, and pocket. Every soul in that blessed bath 
had to have his separate fee and his separate frown 
at the size of it. 



98 MASHALLAH ! 

X. 

MOSQUES AND KIOSQUES. 

There are four hundred mosques in Cairo. 
None of these are ever filled, unless it be the Az'- 
har, or " splendid " mosque, which is the great 
Oriental University. But you seldom enter any 
of them without finding a few intent worshipers 
with their faces turned to Mecca as they rise or 
kneel or bow their foreheads to the pavement over 
and over again. These mosques are never repaired. 
Once dedicated to Allah, they are frequented 
so long as they are tenable, and then they are 
suffered to crumble away, for it is the will of God, 
and no Moslem ever dreams of opposing that. 
A few years ago the foreigner was not admitted 
to the mosques of Cairo. He was not even per- 
mitted to pass in front of some of them. With 
an order from his consulate, he may now enter 
and explore any part of them, and the Christian- 
haters will not scorn to receive a fee from him at 
the door ; in fact, this is expected in every case. 

The mosque that is found in every street of the 
city, in every block almost, and certainly much 
oftener than there is any excuse for, is usually a 
very plain stone building, painted without in 
broad alternate bands of red and white. There 
are seldom any windows visible, though some- 



MOSQUES AND KIOSQUES. 99 

times you chance upon an opening in the wall, 
through whose heavy iron grating you catch a 
glimpse of the cool, shadow-filled cloisters with- 
in, where the faithful are at prayer. The first 
court of the mosque is apt to be flooded with sun- 
shine, a yery furnace in the heat of summer. 
Even the fountain in the center of this court, 
where those who go to prayer must first bathe, 
inasmuch as it is a cistern of still and not always 
very fresh water, can not temper the heat that is 
reflected from the marble pavement in the narrow 
and almost shadowless cloisters on the three sides 
of the court. The fourth side forms the front 
of the mosque proper ; there you put off your 
shoes, unless you have an extra pair to slip on 
over those you chance to be in, for no one is per- 
mitted to cross that threshold without first shak- 
ing the dust of the wicked world from his feet. 

There are mosques domed over with alabaster, 
embroidered with verses from the Koran, wrought 
in great letters of gold ; hung with a thousand 
lamps and ostrich eggs and long tassels of silk ; 
carpeted with soft rugs wherein only the richest 
colors are woven, a feast for the eyes and a lux- 
ury for the feet of those who have put off their 
boots, and are wandering about in their stockings. 
But too often these mosques are as bare as a barn. 
Many of them have glaring white walls, unrelieved 
by any ornamentation whatever, for the Moslem is 
forbidden to make any likeness of anything that 



100 MASH ALLAH ! 

is in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in 
the waters under the earth, and he obeys orders 
to the letter. There are mosques without domes, 
open to the sun like the outer court, and having 
scarcely shade enough in them to admit even a 
short prayer ; but it does not matter much to 
the Arab who drops down alone in the desert at 
high noon and buries his face in the sand for the 
sake of Mohammed and all the saints in the cal- 
endar from Noah up to date. There is a niche in 
the wall toward Mecca, an empty niche that 
looks as if it ought to have a statue in it. On 
the right of the niche is the high pulpit, with 
stairs leading up to it, and a gate at the foot of 
the stairs. On the opposite side of the mosque 
is a platform on columns ; near it are tables 
from which the Koran is read to the people and 
expounded by priests sitting on very plump 
feather beds. 

There are two mosques in Cairo standing un- 
der the very shadow of the high cliffs where the 
citadel and the alabaster mosque of Mohammed 
Ali are lifted up to the sky. These two grand 
mosques, fronting on a narrow, dingy Egyp- 
tian street, and facing one another, mark the 
beginning and the end of the history of Mo- 
hammedan holy houses. The mosque of Sultan 
Hassan, the finest in all Cairo, was built of blocks 
brought from the Pyramids. For three years 
three thousand dollars a day were expended on it, 



MOSQUES AND KIOSQUES. 101 

and when it was at last completed, hung with 
splendid lamps, its pavements swept continually 
by the robes of the worshipers, and the tomb of 
the sultan within the same inclosure, an object 
of veneration, the mosque must have been the 
glory of the city. From that hour, A. D. 1357, it 
has been left to its fate. So long as one stone 
stands upon another it will be visited by the prayer- 
ful Moslems, but not a hand has been put forth to 
save it in all these years of slow but sure decay. 
I passed in under the lofty portico. Dust and 
sand lay in deep drifts along the broken pave- 
ment. A few beggars that slept on the thresh- 
old seemed the last of their race, and were too 
lazy or too sleepy to notice me. At the entrance 
to the mosque my explorations were suspended 
for a moment. A great beam of wood lay across 
the passage. Two or three pairs of ragged canvas 
slippers, of immense size and as filthy as possible, 
reminded me that my unholy feet were forbidden 
to enter the mosque in Christian boots. There 
was no need of entering. I saw all its splendid 
desolation where I stood — its four lofty half 
domes on the four sides of the court, each arch- 
ing toward the great fountain in the center of the 
court ; its hundreds of chains that hung from 
the arches and once suspended the twinkling 
lamps that made beautiful the bare-walled, un- 
furnished mosques. Most of the lamps have 
dropped from the chains, and the remaining links 



102 MASHALLAH ! 

are rusting away, so that the chains are of differ- 
ent lengths as they slowly vibrate in the wind 
that swoops in through the open roof between 
the half domes. Clouds of pigeons hover in the 
recesses of the building and nestle in the cluster- 
ing niches that hang like a broken honeycomb at 
the point of every arch. Dust everywhere and 
grass and long weeds ; vines creeping out of the 
cracks in the high walls that are getting ready to 
fall ; and when they fall the tomb of the Sultan 
will be buried out of sight in one of the glorious 
ruins of the East. I thought I was alone in the 
crumbling mosque, but a shadow stole out of the 
deeper shadow in a far corner and approached me. 
I was invited into a pair of the public slippers, 
putting them on over my boots, and the pigeons 
rushed up into the sky with a roar of wings as we 
woke the echoes in the lonely place. Another 
shadow approached, a begging shadow, that had 
come to a realizing sense of my presence, and he 
was literally my shadow until I stole out of the 
place filled with a kind of sentimental awe. 

Across the street rise the walls of the mosque 
that is now being erected by the Khedive, to bear 
the name of his mother and to hold at last his 
dust, and the dust of his sons and his favorite 
wives, and an assortment of daughters perhaps, 
though girls don't seem to come to the surface in 
his family. The new mosque is prim and fresh and 
highly respectable, and very expensive, and will 



MOSQUES AND KIOSQUES. 103 

probably stand to see the day when the sands of 
the desert shall have fallen out of the wind like 
dry rain on the prostrate and desolated ruin of its 
rival. Rival ? Heaven forbid ! All that is love- 
ly in subdued and harmonious color ; all that is 
beautiful, with the fatal beauty of decay ; all that 
is impressive, and pathetic, and poetical in Cairo, 
perishes in the fall of the mosque of Sultan Has- 
san. The venerable mosque of Tooloon, with its 
court of columns, its great minaret with a wind- 
ing stair on the outer wall of it — the cornice of 
that staircase was of amber — its horseshoe arches 
and its Saracenic ornamentation, has also a mar- 
velous tradition associated with its site. By the 
neik tree in the court of the mosque is the very 
spot where Noah's ark stranded. But what a lit- 
tle Ararat it was for so great a flood ! 

The Az'-har, the "splendid" mosque, the fa- 
mous university of the Orient, is one of the wonders 
of Cairo. Imagine an immense court surrounded 
by four hundred columns of porphyry, marble, 
and granite taken from the ancient temples of 
Egypt. On the Mecca side of the court is the 
place of prayer ; the other three sides are parti- 
tioned off, and allotted to students from various 
parts of the East. There is a separate apartment 
allotted to each province, and a library for the 
use of the students is in each apartment. The 
students live here, sleep under the portico — such 
as are not residents of Cairo — study in the schools, 



104 MASHALLAH ! 

and recite to the master at the foot of one of the 
columns. Knowledge is difficult in the Az'-har. 
Mohammed Ali deprived the university of its 
properties, and now not one of the three hundred 
and fourteen professors receives a farthing for 
his salary, but is obliged to make his living by 
private teaching, book-copying, etc. The ten 
thousand students pay nothing for their instruc- 
tion, but board themselves and make what they 
can by writing letters for the illiterate, receiving 
whatever is offered them in charity, and going 
hungry the rest of the time. There are students 
from every part of the East, ten thousand of 
them, all studying out loud, all squatting on the 
pavement in swarms, that thicken around each of 
the columns, where the professor, with stick in 
hand and within hearing distance of a half a dozen 
other professors, manages to pick out the right 
answers to their questions from the perpetual 
thunder of those ten thousand voices. The uni- 
versity is a power in the land, and while it is op- 
posed to the fanaticism of the people, and even 
ridicules many of the barbarous practices of the 
dervishes, the students with one accord despise 
the dog of a Christian who looks in upon them 
with the assistance of an armed officer of the 
police, without whose aid it would be impossible 
to enter the Az'-har, and unsafe to attempt it 
alone. Three hundred blind men are housed 
and fed in a neighboring chapel from funds be- 



MOSQUES AND KIOSQUES. 105 

queathed for the purpose. These three hundred 
blind men quarrel incessantly, beat one another 
with sticks, and lift their scornful noses in the 
endeavor to smell out a Christian. When they 
discover that one is present, their rage is as ludi- 
crous as it is fruitless, for they know not where 
to strike at the head of the unbeliever, and so 
they beat the air in their fury and howl like 
wild beasts. You wander among the stately 
tombs of the Caliphs and. the Mamelukes, domed 
chambers with sculptured sarcophagi arranged in 
rows, and covered with faded and dusty canopies 
of satin and gold. Soft carpets are ufider foot be- 
tween the tombs, so that the tombs look like some 
sort of quaint furniture in a living-room ; lamps 
overhead and divans to recline on — everything as 
cozy as possible, but over all hangs the deepest 
shadow of death. Why should it not be so in a 
country where they have been dying for so many 
thousands of years ! 

Very much might be written of the charming 
suburbs of Cairo. Heliopolis, with its solitary 
obelisk standing in a green meadow, the only 
surviving monument of the once famous city and 
the oldest obelisk in Egypt. Moses studied there ! 
There also is the sycamore tree in whose shade 
the Holy Family reposed during their flight into 
Egypt, and close at hand is the fountain where 
the Blessed Virgin washed the swaddling-clothes 
of the Blessed Infant. At the island of Roda 



106 MASHALLAH ! 

you are led to the spot where the rush -cradle 
of the baby Moses was rocked in the Nile waves ; 
but somehow it is hard to convince one's self of 
the truth of these traditions, ancient and respect- 
able as they are for the most part. 

There is no doubt about the palaces of the 
Khedive ; they spring up everywhere, and one is 
more ugly than another. An exception may per- 
haps be made in favor of Sezureh, on an island 
opposite Cairo. Extensive suits of chambers were 
lined with deep-blue satin, quilted on the walls, 
and folded in exquisite patterns on the ceiling, 
for the use of the Empress Eugenie when she 
visited the Khedive at the opening of the Suez 
Canal. Later the Emperor of Austria and the 
Prince and Princess of Wales were entertained in 
the same palace. But for the luxurious twilight 
of the rooms, the soft satin hangings, and the gar- 
dens of bamboos and palms that steal up to the 
windows and make music in their branches, the 
palace presents no novelty. Much of its furni- 
ture was exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1867, 
and it looks like exhibition furniture, rather 
theatrical. There is a kiosque in the garden, a 
wilderness of graceful pillars and Alhambra arches 
that are reflected in the waters of a small lake 
that washes its marble terrace. The apartments 
adjoining are sumptuous revelations of Eastern 
life. Gorgeous in color, voluptuous in design, 
you wander in delight from one hall of rainbows 



MOSQUES AND KIOSQUES. 107 

to another till you are satiated with color, and 
then you reach the alabaster temple of the bath, 
filled with a soft rosy light that tinges the per- 
fumed fountain like wine. In this royal kiosque 
the screech of the hyena and the hoarse growl of 
the enraged tiger fall lightly upon the ear. It is 
pleasant to bury yourself in a billowy sea of 
lemon-colored silk crusted with gold and break- 
ing along the Persian carpet in golden fringes a 
yard deep, and to hear the wild snort of the rhi- 
noceros and the shriek of the birds of prey, but 
all the while to know that they are bolted fast 
in their respective dungeons beyond the bamboo 
jungles. 

There is a garden at Shoobra, where the cit- 
rons lie in golden profusion under the deep shade 
of the trees. At one end of this fragrant for- 
est is a kiosque, a cloister that incloses a lake 
and a fountain. The marble shore of the lake 
is curiously carved ; you would think that every 
sort of living thing had crept out of the still 
water to sun itself at low tide. Lily-pads bask 
on the oily surface of the lake, shining crystal 
globes hang in the cloisters, and at the four 
corners of the kiosque are four retiring rooms, 
such as might cast a glamour over any sin and 
woo the most wakeful to repose. All this plea- 
sure-house is withered like a flower that has 
served its end and been cast aside. At the other 
side of the garden is a hillock covered with spicy 



108 MASHALLAH ! 

trees. A muddy stream has been taught to make 
an island of the place. You cross a bridge that 
sinks under you treacherously ; you ascend the 
marble stairs that are cushioned with moss ; you 
pass entirely around a small palace in the perpet- 
ual dusk of its broad, semi-curtained veranda. 
The doors and windows are bolted securely ; 
through the worm-eaten shutters you peer into 
the mysterious shadows that envelop and nearly 
absorb every object. Here is a dream of Oriental 
luxury, but a dream that would come to an end 
suddenly enough if the light of day were let into 
that deserted hall. The aquaria are all dry and 
half full of dust and sand ; the painted lanterns 
are broken ; the moth-eaten drapery hangs in 
ribbons from the heavy cornice, a thousand liz- 
ards and black creeping things dart out from 
under your feet at every step ; the very sound of 
your footstep grows oppressive, and, when you 
stumble upon a green snake lying in an unwhole- 
some coil at the foot of the stairs, you shudder 
and retreat. It is the palace of the Sleeping 
Beauty ; but no prince in the flesh shall break the 
spell of her enchantment. Probably the guards 
fly to. you at this moment — they did to me, and 
politely begged that I would withdraw immedi- 
ately, as the harem had arrived and the gardens 
must be emptied. Swarms of eunuchs scoured 
the place, and not a shady bower but was probed 
with slender canes to see if it were defiled by the 



THE PYRAMIDS. 109 

profane presence of man. I heard light laughter, 
and saw through the bended boughs the white 
mask and the gazelle eyes of those pampered 
slaves of lust. Behold the soiled beauties of the 
harem, let loose for an hour to sport in the melan- 
choly gardens of the East ! 



XL 

THE PYRAMIDS. 



The day of pilgrimage is about over. A half- 
dozen years ago the Pyramids of Gheezeh were 
approached by a winding trail that led through 
marshes and across a branch of the Nile. You 
were obliged to go out by donkey, for only a 
donkey could have made his way in safety along 
the slippery margins of the standing water pools 
left by the inundation. You were at times driven 
to boats, and had "numerous ventures by flood 
and field " before you came at last to the pyramid 
platform, and sank down in the shadow of Che- 
ops to contemplate nature. But now ! Your 
dragoman calls you in the cool of the morning. 
Coffee and rolls await you in the breakfast-room. 
A carriage and span with a champagne luncheon 
secreted under the seat is at the door. You light 
your cigar, sink back in the luxurious cushions, 
roll swiftly over a splendid macadamized road that 



110 MASHALLAH! 

is built above high-water mark and threads an 
avenue shaded by trees, leap all the streams with 
the aid of excellent bridges, and in one hour and 
a half are set down at the foot of the steep ascent, 
only ten minutes walk from the Great Pyramid ! 
For a long way out of Cairo, so long as the land 
feels the pulse of the life-bestowing Nile, your 
eye feasts upon the deliciously green meadows 
where the ibises in the distance shine like snow- 
flakes. Groves of palm are scattered along the 
horizon, the road winds through the edges of 
some of these groves, and from the mud huts of 
the fellaheen swarms of half -naked children buzz 
after you like bees. It is always the same cry 
of "Backsheesh," but the ear gets accustomed 
to it, and Egypt would be intolerably lonesome 
but for the hum of her two million slaves. 

The business of climbing Cheops is begun as 
early in the day as possible ; not that it is a long 
or a difficult task, but because the sun pours his 
hottest beams in a baptism of fire over the desert, 
and there is no shade, no breath of fresh and fra- 
grant air, no cooling draught at hand. You alight 
at the base of Cheops and are immediately be- 
sieged by an army of Bedawees, who are famous 
bores. For more than forty centuries these Be- 
dawees have besieged the pyramid-climbers from 
every quarter of the earth ; they have a smatter- 
ing of all languages at their tongue's end, and 
their hands are filled with old coins and new sea- 



THE PYRAMIDS. Ill 

rabaei, which they swear are old. The sheik is 
your only hope ; every village, every community, 
has its sheik, and his word is law. Purchase his 
friendship — you can do it with a couple of francs 
— and you are perfectly safe. He orders three of 
his "howling savages" to take you in hand, and 
conduct you to the summit of Cheops. Accord- 
ing to the agreement with the sheik, you were to 
pay so much into his hands upon your return to 
earth, after having reposed as long as you think 
fit at the top of the pyramid. Meanwhile no fee 
is to be given to the three fierce and athletic fel- 
lows who help you up and down, nor are they to 
ask for any, on pain of the bastinado, in case any 
complaint is made against them. This being 
considered satisfactory by all parties concerned, 
you are seized under the arms by two of the Be- 
dawees, while the third gives you a gentle poke in 
the small of the back from time to time. Once 
started on this novel ascent, it is quite impossible 
to abandon it before it is completed to the let- 
ter. You may repent and grow dizzy and short- 
winded, but the strong grip on your arms brings 
you to your feet again, and you are swung up 
from one terrace to another, hurried to the right 
and to the left by a zigzag trail that has evident- 
ly been searching for low steps and crevices in 
the stones, and found them in many cases. Each 
stone is about the height of a table; it is four 
hundred and sixty perpendicular feet to the top 



112 MASH ALL AH! 

of the pyramid, and yon are permitted to rest 
about three times on the way up. 

At first the Bedawee touches your right arm, 
and asks you if you would like to rest. You scorn 
the idea, and leap like a chamois from rock to rock, 
to show him how very far you are from feeling fa- 
tigued. He praises your powers of endurance, feels 
of your muscles, and says your legs are splendid. 
You realize that they must be, for you have evi- 
dently astonished him with your strength and 
agility. By and by he insists upon your resting 
for a moment only. You rest for his sake as 
much as your own, for" you are a little out of 
breath, and fear that he, that all three of the attend- 
ants, must feel fatigued. At this moment a small 
boy makes his appearance with a jug of brackish 
water in his hand. He climbs like a cat, and is 
so little that his head is lost below the edge of 
each stair as he climbs toward you. That boy 
follows you to the top and pours water oyer your 
head and hands, and gives you a drink at the 
slightest provocation, and all for a half-dozen 
sous. He is getting his muscles in training for 
the ascents he hopes to make in years to come, for 
he is born under the pyramid, and he will die 
under it, some day, unless he happens to breathe 
his last at the top of it. 

Before you are quite ready to start afresh 
the Bedawees clutch you, and you go bound- 
ing from step to step, sometimes finding foot- 



THE PYRAMIDS. 113 

hold for yourself, but oftener dangling in mid- 
air, with the fellow behind clinging to you in- 
stead of lending his aid. When you propose 
a second rest, you are put off with the promise 
of one a little farther up, and you nearly perish 
before you come to the spot. There is no pride 
of muscle, no ambition, no wind left in you 
now ! You sink into a corner of the rock and 
shut your eyes, for you have caught a glimpse of 
the sandy sea that is all aglow in the fierce sun- 
shine ; and away down at the foot of the pyra- 
mid there are multitudes of black objects creep- 
ing about like ants, and you know these are men 
and women, and then you feel as if you could never 
get to the top of Cheops, and if you did, you know 
you could never get to the bottom again, unless 
you were to tumble head foremost down all those 
frightful stairs, and you grow faint, and call 
on the water-boy, and find life a good deal of a 
bore. You don't look down after that. You 
hum fragments of that unf orgetable song, with its 
highly moral refrain "Excelsior," and begin to 
perspire profusely, and to feel as if you would 
probably lay your bones on the top stair and give 
up the ghost on the spot. Eesignation or despair, 
you hardly know which, has completely cowed 
you. When you rest the third time one of the 
Bedawees kindly chafes your legs, straightens out 
the kinks in your muscles, and says pleasant 
things to you about the remainder of the jour- 
8 



114 MASHALLAH! 

ney. He points you to the top, which, sure 
enough, is only a little farther up, and you begin 
to wonder if it will be large enough to stand on, 
or if you will have to straddle it, and perhaps roll 
down on the other side. It is large enough to 
build a house on. I ached for a shelter of some 
sort while I was up there, and haying looked over 
all the world of sand, with the blue Nile flowing 
through it between shores of emerald and fields 
of corn and groves of palm, I was glad to slide 
down into the narrow shadow under the highest 
step, and there rest for half an hour. 

It was the place in which to dream gorgeous 
dreams, to conjure up the ghosts of the past and 
take long speculative looks into the future. But I 
did none of these. Some one was continually load- 
ing me with spurious antiquities, and imploring 
me to purchase at fabulous prices. When their 
prayers were unanswered, and I had grown weary 
of requesting them to shut up shop and retire 
from business, they turned on me with threats, 
and hinted ever so darkly that if I cared to 
return to my people with a complete skeleton, it 
would be well for me to reduce their stock in 
trade at as early an hour as convenient. They 
did drop in their prices ; justice to them compels 
me to state that the handful of coins they at first 
offered at ten francs, they at last did not scorn to 
receive six sous for. We came to terms, and 
easily enough, for, as I felt assured of my safe- 



THE PYRAMIDS. 115 

ty, inasmuch as they were responsible for it, and 
as there is in my eye or my heart something that 
almost at once establishes an unswerving fellow- 
ship between any dark skin and myself, we struck 
hands very shortly and exchanged talismans, and 
the cry of backsheesh died upon their lips. 

To be sure, that time-honored custom of the 
Bedawees, that confidential confession which they 
make to every traveler on his way down the pyra- 
mid, was made to me. I was sworn to secrecy of 
course, and then I learned how the sheik was 
quite a brute, and had plenty of money and lots 
of wives ; how there were too many pyramid-climb- 
ers for the good of the craft, and how all the 
money that came to them was put into a general 
fund, out of which each of the too many Beda- 
wees received his little share. Times were hard, 
and they couldn't eat sand for ever ; would I 
therefore give them a little before we came quite 
to the bottom and say nothing about it, lest the 
sheik's wrath should be turned against them ? I 
did it with pleasure ; they were good fellows, spite 
of their audacious humbuggery. They were hard- 
working, cheerful, witty, and obliging fellows, and 
much jollier companions than the majority of 
tourists one falls in with in one's travels. When 
my legs gave out, which they certainly did on 
the way down, I was lifted bodily from one step 
to another, and beguiled with the gossip of the 
desert, and I felt, when they set me at last over 



116 MASHALLAH! 

my boots in the sand, that it was a blessed thing 
to have been so near the sky on so solid a foun- 
dation — nearer the sky than is the dome of 
St. Paul's in London, nearer than St. Peter's in 
Kome, as near or nearer than the tower of Stras- 
burg Cathedral, the highest tower in the world. 

Who would bury himself in the bowels of that 
tomb of Cheops ? Not I ! There are tombs 
enough, and old temples under the sand that 
have their roofs broken open and know what fresh 
air and sunshine are. The blackness of darkness 
has been accumulating all these thousands of years 
in the breathless hollow of the pyramid, so that 
now a single sunbeam would be choked to death 
if it were possible for it to find its way in there. 
Your Egyptian darkness is bottled up in these 
mummy pits, to be felt and written about by peo- 
ple who don't know what it is until they have 
emerged from an exploration of the pyramid three 
shades blacker in the face, and with their mouths 
full of it. There was a tent pitched out in the 
desert. One must needs go twice or thrice to the 
Pyramids to grow used to their bulk before they 
will duly impress him. On my second visit I had 
resolved to see a sunset and a moonrise, both gen- 
erously provided by Providence, and I repaired 
to that tent of the desert and slept the sleep of 
the just for a good part of the afternoon. I was 
awakened in the white heat of the noon, and saw 
the three pyramids trembling and changing color 



THE PYRAMIDS, 117 

in the irresistible flood of light that deluged 
them. 

The Sphinx lost by comparison, and in the 
glare of day I was but feebly impressed with the 
magnitude of the image ; moreover, the face is so 
shattered and the body so surrounded by sand drifts 
that it is difficult to get a distinct view of it. But 
at sunset, when the sky was as a rose in fullest 
bloom, and the distant Nile a ribbon of red gold, 
and the Pyramids were as live coals fanned with a 
soft breath, and the Sphinx was flushed with joy, 
I felt that there are some events in this life that 
never grow hackneyed, however often repeated. 
This was one of them. When I looked again there 
was a visible change : the flush went out of that 
scornful face ; the hard lines were softened, the 
wrinkles smoothed away as the mellow moonlight 
fell upon it over the vast solitude of the desert. 
It matters little whether it be the image of man 
or woman, brute or human ; the eternal mystery 
that enshrouds it is deepened, is hallowed, when 
the night gathers about it, and all the stars swim 
overhead in startling brilliancy, and all the sands 
stretch away to the horizon in drifts as white as 
snow. 

One fact we are sure of — this is the most an- 
cient idol of the East, a type of the first face, 
and one that will endure to the end of time, and 
will then fix its placid gaze upon the pitiful ob- 
ject writhing at its feet, the final victim of a per- 



118 MASH ALLAH! 

ishing world. We know that those melancholy 
eyes looked over the broad Nile waters from a 
lonely island, and saw the hordes of slaves that for 
ten long years toiled as the ants toil until they had 
built a monstrous caravansary that rose out the 
Nile to the solid platform of the island — three 
hundred and sixty-six thousand souls tugging at 
the mighty blocks of stone that were brought from 
the distant quarries of Arabia, and then the great- 
er work began. For twenty years the army of 
workers heaved the great stones together, and at 
last the vanity of Cheops was satisfied, and he died 
and was embalmed and laid away in the heart of 
his pyramid. Cephren followed in the footsteps 
of Cheops, and his monument was a mountain. 
Then Mycerinus, the son of Cheops, ascended the 
throne, and the third pyramid towered above the 
desert. He was a mummy before its completion, 
but to-day it is the completest of the three. This 
Sphinx could tell us if it be truly the tomb of 
Mycerinus, or if the lovers of the fair but frail 
Ehodopis, whom Sappho calls Doricha, reared this 
royal sepulchre for her unhallowed manes ; or yet 
if that fair virgin who was bathing in the Nile 
when an eagle swooped upon one of her sandals 
and flew away to drop it in the lap of the King as 
he sat at judgment was really the first Cinderella ; 
for the King was so charmed with the diminutive- 
ness of that sandal that he caused the country to 
be scoured in search of its owner, and he shared 



MEMPHIS AND SAKKARAH. 119 

his throne with her and built her a pyramid for 
ever. In those days this haggard face was comely, 
with rose tints upon the cheeks and a royal hel- 
met upon the head. There was an altar beneath 
the heart of it, and the incense from that altar 
curled over the breast that is now buried in sand, 
and ascended to the nostrils that have crumbled 
away, and the swarms of slaves passed to and fro 
under the grateful shadow of the drooping wings. 
Pale in the moonlight, the proud head lifted to 
the stars that shine for ever in those latitudes, the 
sad face turned away from the mountains of stone 
that have grown up beside her. Ah ! if the lips 
would but break their eternal silence, and reveal 
to us by what almost superhuman power the Pyra- 
mids were piled up into the sky ! But no ! she 
is a woman, and she will never tell. 



XII. 

MEMPHIS AND SAKKARAH. 

All night the Sphinx kept silent watch over 
our sleepless camp. Again and again we stole 
into our tent and wrestled with the Angel of Sleep, 
but grew only the more wakeful in consequence 
of our exertions. Again and again we went forth 
into the desert and strode noiselessly to the base 
of the great solemn image, and felt the majesty of 



120 MASHALLAH f 

its presence, and began to picture in the moonlight 
the splendid pageants of the past. The Pyramids 
rose, stone by stone, above the wind-swept plains, 
and the great army of toiling slaves crowded about 
us so densely that at last, overwhelmed, we re- 
turned to camp and stirred the fire into swift-leap- 
ing flames — for the dawn was chilly — and lit our 
pipes, and talked of the pilgrimage to Memphis 
and Sakkarah. Perhaps it was the moonlight 
that quickened our imaginations and made that 
night under the shadow of the Pyramids memor- 
able ; perhaps it was our deep bowls of Turkish 
tobacco whose incense curled about our camp a 
great part of the night ; perhaps it was the mar- 
velous, the bewitching atmosphere of Egypt, that 
is spicy and invigorating, and fraught with poetic 
legends, and filled with ghosts. The day breaks 
suddenly in the east and with little warning ; the 
sky grows gray and silvery ; then the horizon all 
at once flushes, and out of the desert rises the great 
sun, a rayless disk of gold that rolls up into the 
heavens, and the long day is begun. Before sun- 
up we folded our tents. In the horizon the peaks 
of the distant Pyramids of Sakkarah were already 
visible. Our path lay through the desert, and 
we were in the saddle betimes, for the desert is 
hot and blinding, and there is little to interest 
one after the novelty of the first half hour has 
worn away. Bound up in a cloak of coarse ca- 
mel's hair, with a large kerchief of silk and wool 



MEMPHIS AND SAKKARAH. 121 

drawn oyer my head and face, leaving only my 
eyes exposed, I was lifted into the saddle in which I 
was about to make my first pilgrimage in the desert. 
All this bundling is found to be of the utmost 
service in the fierce desert heat. You look as if 
you were sweltering, smothering under the thick 
cloak and the cumbersome, though graceful head- 
gear. On the contrary, you are as cool and com- 
fortable as possible, and can endure the heat for a 
whole day without complaining. My camel was 
tied down in the sand, patiently awaiting his bur- 
den. You tie a camel to himself ; that is, when 
he has shut up his legs under him like knife-blades, 
you slip a leathern bracelet oyer his knee, and 
there you have him, for it is impossible for him 
to open his leg so long as this bracelet is around 
it, binding the leg above the knee and the shin- 
bone together like a pair of tongs. Of course it 
is not easy to find anything in the desert to which 
you may tie your camel with security ; a benefi- 
cent Providence has therefore made every camel 
his own hitching-post, likewise his own cistern 
and vegetable market and step-ladder — in fact, the 
camel is the most complete machine on four legs 
that we have knowledge of. His machinery is 
clumsy and needs oiling. His great joints show 
through his sides ; his tail is the barest apology 
and unworthy of notice. You would think your 
camel went on stilts if you were to start off sud- 
denly, sitting in a nest of luggage on that high 



122 MASH ALLAH ! 

back of his. You would think he had his feet in 
poultices if you were to look at the soft, spongy- 
things as they fall noiselessly on the earth and 
spread under his tottering weight. And that 
tearful face of his, with its liquid and pathetic 
eyes, and those deep cavities above them, big 
enough to hold a hen's egg ; his aquiline nose with 
its narrow slanting nostrils that shut tight against 
the sand-storms and the withering hhamdseen and 
give him a very scornful expression; the whole 
face looks as if it were just going to cry. The 
absurd under lip is puckering and pouting to the 
most alarming extent, and you are not at all sur- 
prised when the beast finally bursts into tears and 
cries, long and loud, like a great overgrown baby. 
This is the pudding-footed pride of the desert, 
whose silken hair is man's raiment, and whose 
milk is meat and drink. 

While my camel was still kneeling, I stepped 
into the curve of his neck and went up the front 
stairs to the top of his hump. His saddle was a 
tree of wood with thick rugs lashed over it. It 
was a little like swinging in a sawbuck, riding 
that camel to Sakkarah. He edged his way over 
the desert, putting the two legs on one side of him 
forward at the same time, and then keeling over 
and pushing the other side ahead. I was continu- 
ally rocked back and forth until my head swung 
loosely on my shoulders, my sides ached, and all 
my spine was sore. Many people are seasick when 



MEMPHIS AND SAKKARAH. 123 

they mount a camel for the first time. The mo- 
tion is not unlike that of a small boat in a chop- 
ping sea. There is certainly no pleasure and yery 
little elegance in your rest as you toss to and fro 
on the summit of that animated mountain of in- 
dia-rubber. 

The desert lay all before us, rimmed by the Lib- 
yan hills. We seemed to follow no definite path, 
but to travel by compass, taking an observation 
now and again from the tops of the desert mounds. 
Everything was of a color — a tawny white with 
a tinge of gold in it. We went down into val- 
leys that were shadowless, and climbed hills that 
were blinding in the glare of the sun. Away off 
in the sea of sand, between the long waves that 
opened before us, we saw a dark line creeping 
slowly, slowly, and with an uneven movement. 
It looked precisely like a great black snake crawl- 
ing out into the horizon. It was a caravan. 

While we strode through the desert in silence, 
the sun growing hotter and hotter every hour, we 
met no one, no living thing, no bleaching skeletons, 
no objects of interest, nothing at all, until all at 
once we rounded a low hill and found ourselves 
close upon a solitary lodge in the vast wilderness. 
Three wolfish-looking dogs barked at us from the 
wall of the house. We drew nearer ; a door was 
opened ; there was not a window visible in the 
whole establishment. Two Bedawees stepped forth 
and gave us the graceful salam of the country. 



124 MASHALLAH ! 

This was the desert house of M. Mariette, who in 
1860-'61 made his wonderful discoveries in this 
neighborhood. 

. . . " There is also a serapium in a very sandy 
spot, where drifts of sand are raised by the wind 
to such a degree that we saw some sphinxes buried 
up to their heads, and others half covered." 

Thus wrote old Strabo before the Christian era, 
and here Mariette built his lodge and set his men 
to work. The sphinxes came to light, an avenue 
of them, very much shattered of course, for they 
were thousands of years old. Down under the 
desert the men dug their way like moles into the 
subterranean halls of the Apis Mausoleum. In 
the palmy days of Memphis the sacred bull was 
worshiped in a magnificent temple and stalled in 
a palace. When he died, his embalmed body was 
placed in a huge stone sarcophagus and stored in 
one of the chambers of the Mausoleum. In a 
temple over the tombs sacrifices were still offered, 
and on certain anniversaries the great people came 
to worship, and placed tablets in the burial cham- 
bers commemorative of their visit. All this Ma- 
riette brought to light. Through the long halls 
of the Mausoleum the guide with his taper, that 
seems afraid to blaze in that Egyptian darkness, 
leads you from one sarcophagus to another in 
funereal silence. When you have seen about forty 
of them, and have grown faint in the close air, and 
are bored by sacred bulls or the shadow of them, 



MEMPHIS AND SAKKARAH. 125 

you return to the glare of the desert and wilt 
under the fierce heat of the sun. 

The marvelous tomb of Tih is near at hand. 
There is a shadow there, and a royal chamber, 
sculptured, painted, and still fresh in form and 
color, though Tih gave up the ghost in the Fifth 
Dynasty, nearly four thousand years before Christ. 
The history, poetry, and romance of that ancient 
life enrich the walls of this tomb. Tih was a 
priest of Memphis ; one who loved wholesome 
out-of-door sports, and was often in his boat 
decoying ducks, or taking fish in the Nile with 
drag nets, or walking among the farmers in har- 
vest, sporting with his pet animals, sitting in 
state entertained by singers, dancers, and acro- 
bats ; or assisting at the services of the temple. 
He must have been a jovial priest, with his pet 
Numidian cranes, his fancy pigeons, his gazelles, 
and the fondness he had for games of every 
sort. At last he gave over the joys of Memphis, 
was swathed in linen and sweet spices, cased in 
wood and painted without in a thousand differ- 
ent colors, and then floated down the Nile on a 
death barge, and borne over the desert on sledges, 
and put away in a deep vault under this palatial 
tomb. You have it all in carved and tinted stone, 
this quaint page out of the Egyptian life five 
thousand years ago. 

There are eleven pyramids on the Sakkarah 
plateau. They spring upon all sides ; some 



126 MASHALLAH ! 

tower close at hand, two or three are in the 
middle distance, and then they grow beautifully- 
less as they sink into the haze — the sand-laden 
wind of the desert. The effect is superb, to 
see pyramids in abundance, and nothing but 
pyramids, on a plain that is golden, undulat- 
ing, shadowless, with never so much as a palm- 
tree to relieve the monotony ; and above you the 
broadest, bluest sky imaginable, cloudless and 
painfully bright. There is a pyramid here, a little 
out of repair, but still not shabby, whose history 
is guessed at. If that history is true, then there 
is no monument on the face of the earth older 
than this ; there is nothing to be compared with 
it. It is the foundation-stone of all that has fol- 
lowed in the history of mankind, of all that is yet 
to come. I believe you realize this as you pause 
under the pyramid, spite of the glare, the heat, 
the camel, and are rather glad to get away again 
and to hasten toward the edge of the desert, where 
the palms crowd together in great armies and 
wave their boughs of welcome. 

You may ride all day among the palm groves, 
and over plowed fields where Memphis once stood, 
and you will not, if you are not forewarned, suspect 
that the glorious city lies under your feet, in the 
dust. There is not a trace of it left ; these groves 
that make the land lovely to-day may be distantly 
related to the sacred groves for which Memphis 
was celebrated, but the half-dozen broken statues 



MEMPHIS AND SAKKARAH. 127 

that lie partially buried among them are stronger 
links that bind us to the past. The plowmen, 
thrusting their rude sticks into the soil, turn up 
the coins and amulets that are so ingeniously imi- 
tated nowadays, and the custodian of a rustic 
museum stored with minute fragments of sculp- 
ture is ever eager to part with his treasures at 
absurdly high figures. Memphis, for whose foun- 
dation the Mle was turned aside, has departed like 
its sister Alexandria, and left no sign. The Nile 
has come back to mourn over it, and to leave 
green pools of water under the groves, where the 
frogs croak and white ibises brood, and the snake 
sleeps. When the water flows back and the pools 
have been drunk up by the sun, there is a majestic 
figure of stone, prone on its face in the dust, that 
lies hidden in one of the grassy hollows. He stood 
thirty cubits high; he wore on his breast an amulet, 
and in his hand he held a scroll bearing his name, 
Amun-mai-Kameses. How are the mighty fallen ! 
With his forehead to the earth — the last survivor 
of all the gods of Memphis — it might have been 
written of him as it was written of Sisera when 
he perished at the foot of her he loved. Yea ! 
under these palms, the funeral plumes of the de- 
parted Memphis, Deborah might have raised her 
song of Amun-mai-Kameses and of Time who 
slew him : "At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay 
down ; at her feet he bowed, lie fell ; where he 
bowed, there he fell down dead." 



128 MASHALLAH ! 

XIII. 
OK THE KILE. 

Dahabeah Nitetis, on the Nile. 

We are off at last and all adrift under the 
vertical sun. We are threading the tremendous 
artery that gives life to so many millions of peo- 
ple, working against a powerful current, an occa- 
sional calm, or a possible head wind ; working 
slowly but surely southward toward the heart of 
Africa. 

As I open this Nile log with an enthusiastic 
determination to write a vast volume before we 
return to Cairo out of the Nubian wilderness, I 
wonder where we will fetch up, and when, and 
how, and why. Just now it seems to me that I 
could sail on for ever as we have been sailing to- 
day, and for ever find a consolation in the thought 
that we are out of the reach of bad tidings, and 
have nothing to do but kill time in whatever way 

we see fit. Mr. H is our head man. It was he 

who rushed to and fro for a whole week looking 
for a barge to let, and finding the port of Boolak, 
which is the water front of Cairo, crowded with 
boats of every description. Many of them have 
already done duty this year — for we are late in the 
season — but are ready to do it again at a reduced 
figure. The proprietors of the Nile boats find it 



ON THE NILE. 129 

a profitable speculation to have a small fleet on the 
river ready to set sail at the shortest notice. Mr. 

H secured one of these barges, which we are 

only too happy to call dahabeah as frequently as 
possible, because it sounds queer and we have but 
just learned how to pronounce it. 

The Nitetis is a broad, flat-bottomed craft, 
one hundred and twenty feet in length. A 
cabin covers two thirds of her deck, a cabin 
with two saloons, several single and double state- 
rooms, a bath-room, and all the luxuries of first- 
class hotel life. There is a short mast in the 
bow of the boat, with a spar one hundred and 
seventy feet in length ; a spar beginning close 
to the water on one side of the boat, crossing 
over the top of the mast, and then tapering 
away to a fine point that seems to rake the very 
stars. Just over the rudder is our other mast, 
with a small lateen sail, and on these two sheets 
hang all our hope of Nubia. The galley, which 
looks like a toy kitchen, is in the bow of the 
boat, open to the air — we fear no rain in this 
latitude — and the wonder is how such capital 
dishes can emanate from so primitive an establish- 
ment. The main deck is a complication of trap- 
doors. It is just the place for a pantomime, or 
something in the line of startling effects, sud- 
den transformations, etc. The crew — captain, 
second captain, fourteen sailors, cook, vice-cook, 
and two cabin-boys, together with an excessively 
9 



130 MASHALLAH! 

small Arab, a son of the old captain, who is seeing 
the world for the first time — all these good and 
faithful fellows sleep on deck, unless they prefer 
to spring a trap-door on themselves and mys- 
teriously disappear. We haye also the dragoman, 
without whom it were yam to attempt the Nile, 
for the bother would make any economy a dear 
experience, more than counterbalanced by the 
wear and tear of nerves, coupled with a conscious- 
ness that the Arabs were getting the better of you 
day by day. Our dragoman, Michel Shyah, the 
white swallow among dragomen, a handsome and 
well-bred Syrian, has his assistant, one Yussef 
Amatury, of Beyrut, who has English and French 
at his tongue's end, and, though a boy, he was born 
and bred to the business of catering for others, 
and proves his ability almost every moment. 

We of the cabin are ten in number. Four ladies 
shed their sweet influences over the adamantine 

hearts of five bachelors. Mr. H , our head and 

front, is a victim of matrimony, but it is well to 
have something of the sort to stand as mediator be- 
tween us. That is all our manifest manifests to 
the public eye, but there are nooks and corners in 
the cabin of the Nitetis that are stuffed full of 
good wines, good cigars, special jars of dainties, to 
be discussed between meals, and our bookshelves 
groan under their weight of precious volumes. 
A piano made its appearance at the last moment, 
and several easy-chairs were hurried on board just 



ON THE NILE. 131 

as we were casting loose at Boolak. At this stage 
of the voyage we can think of nothing desirable 
which we have not within reach, and it now seems 
to us that all that is best in life has come up into 
the ship with us, two and two of every kind ; we 
feel like saying to the wicked world on which we 
are turning our back : "Farewell; be happy, if 
you still have ingenuity enough to devise some 
new method of enjoyment. Be gay, poor world- 
ling, but as for us we go hence in search of the 
peace which has escaped us hitherto. We are 
about to corner it somewhere in the African 
wilds!" 

Then with a patronizing wave of the hand 
we lean over the quarter rail, ten of us in a row, 
and the great white sail of the bow spreads it- 
self like an ibis wing, and the little sail in the 
stern follows suit. We swing off into the stream 
with a strange sensation, as if we were not quite 
sure of our reckoning — and what if we should 
never get back ! A sudden flash from the lower 
deck, the sharp snap of a rifle, and Yussef tosses 
his tarboosh into the air, and cries " Hip ! hip ! " 
to the crew of dusky savages, who smile with all 
their fine white teeth in dazzling array. That is 
cue enough for them, and we have three rousing 
cheers that are echoed from the hollow courts of 
the great houses along the Nile bank. I don't 
remember how long this sort of thing con- 
tinued. 



132 MASHALLAH! 

We strode about the deck, the quarter-deck oyer 
the cabin, where we had room enough to stride in, 
and watched the palm groves on shore and hailed 
the barges that were continually passing us, for 
the Nile is crowded with boats, native and foreign. 
Then we began reading diligently, and read for 
ten minutes or so without stopping. Everything 
is still new to us. We have not yet got over the 
bazaar life of Cairo, which is so beautiful and so 
bewildering. We are only a few hours out on a 
voyage of two months or more. We don't know 
exactly what to do next. Some one goes to the 
piano, and a fragment of a Strauss waltz sets our 
feet in motion. Then Yussef reports the Pyra- 
mids just abreast of us, and we drop everything 
else and turn to the west, where, beyond the palm 
groves and the glassy pools that reflect them, we 
see the three pyramids, with the sun gilding one 
side of each and casting a deep shadow on the 
other. Sometimes the wind falls a little and our 
sails sag, and we are borne back by the strong 
current of the stream. At such seasons we all 
talk wildly of expeditions on shore, but by the 
time we have come to a definite conclusion as to 
the nature of these exploits — whether it be a pil- 
grimage to the Pyramids that keep staring at us 
from over the desert, or a picnic in the delightful 
grove by the shore, or a visit to a mud village that 
is perched on the edge of the high bank a mile or 
two up stream — by this time the wind rises again 



ON THE NILE. 133 

and fills our sails, and we spring forward with a 
roar of waters under our bow and a white wave 
on each side of us. 

A downward-bound dahabeah was reported at 
three o'clock. She hoisted the English flag and 
we threw out the Stars and Stripes. Yussef was 
on hand, of course, and as we came abreast in 
mid-stream, quite near to each other, we dipped 
colors and gave them a salute of three guns. To 
our amazement, they took not the slightest no- 
tice of us. There was no one on deck; the 
crew labored heavily at the long oars and droned 
out a doleful song — they always sing, these Arabs ; 
and in ten minutes we were out of hailing dis- 
tance, discussing with considerable warmth the 
political significance of this snub. Our enthu- 
siasm was boundless. This is the first foreign 
boat we have met, and if those indifferent Eng- 
lishes had given us half a chance we would have 
come to anchor in mid-stream, boarded them, 
loaded them with congratulations and late papers, 
and then brought them over to the Nitetis in royal 
style, and popped our best champagne in honor of 
the occasion. We conclude that the entire party 
has expired on the voyage, and the funeral barge 
is returning to Cairo in deep mourning. We are 
encouraged in this belief by the melancholy, the 
heart-rending accounts of the sufferings endured 
by passengers in dahabeahs, as published and dili- 
gently circulated by Messrs. Thomas Cook & Son 



134 MASHALLAH ! 

(and Jenkins), who have purchased the monopoly 
of the little Nile steamers. 

Toward evening, when the wind had fresh- 
ened, and we were dashing through the water 
in splendid style, all of a sudden we began to 
tremble violently, and then we came to a dead 
halt in the middle of the river. The braces 
were cast off immediately, and the great sails flut- 
tered like immense banners. We were aground. 
There was not a shadow of doubt as to that 
fact, and I wondered how we were to get off 
again. The sailors ran up the shrouds immedi- 
ately and climbed out on the long, slender spar, 
the point of which bent under them a little. Then 
they all began gathering in the sail by the armful, 
and singing, or rather chanting, a litany of their 
saints. It was a perpetual cry to Job, whom they 
call " Yob," for patience, and a responsive cry to 
Sarah, the wife of Abraham, though I don't know 
what she has to do with the nautical career of 
these Nile bargemen. " Sarah, Yob, Sarah, Yob," 
reiterated in little gasps by the double choir, who 
devoted themselves respectively to these worthy 
ancients, brought the snow-white canvas into its 
net of rope and fastened it securely to the spar. 
Down came the sailor-boys, as lithe as monkeys. 
The next moment these same boys threw off their 
scanty garments and leaped overboard. They 
were only waist-deep in the water, and yet the 
Nile banks were a quarter of a mile distant on 



ON THE NILE. 135 

each side of us. The Nile barge has a heavy bow, 
built expressly with a yiew to butting in to sand- 
bars. The barge draws more water under the bow 
than anywhere else. When you run on to a bar 
you never run very deep into it, and the bow is 
all that sticks ; you generally swing around in the 
current as if you were hung on a pivot. The crew 
backed under our bow and put their shoulders to 
the boat. Then beginning their litany, " Yob and 
Sarah," they hoisted us off into the stream, where 
the current took us and bore us away so rapidly 
that the crew had to swim after us, which they did 
with the utmost jollity. They came out, sleek and 
glossy — splendidly built fellows of all shades of 
color, from the olive of the Cairene to the ebony 
of the Nubian. We were rapidly drifting toward 
Cairo, the current of the Nile is so powerful. Be- 
fore the crew had time to resume their wardrobe, 
the old Rais, the captain, gave the order to shake 
out our canvas, and with one pull at the right 
rope the lashings on the sail unraveled like a sew- 
ing-machine stitch and the sail filled in a moment. 
"Job and Sarah "had nothing to do with this 
brilliant Nilotic feat. The more appropriate 
chorus would be "Wheeler and Wilson," "Will- 
cox and Gibbs ! " 

Scarcely had our astonishment subsided, even 
in the midst of our mutual congratulation on the 
happy escape from the bar, when a second shock 
brought us all to our feet. Again the canvas 



136 MASHALLAH ! 

flapped wildly in the wind, and we turned aside 
to muse on wrecks and desert islands and other 
delicious horrors of our youth. It was a waste of 
sentiment, if indeed this delightful accomplish- 
ment is ever out of place, for the strong tide took 
us in its arms, as if it were sorry that we couldn't 
keep out of difficulty for a brief half hour, and 
we were backed off that shoal without disturbing 
either " Sarah or Job." Free at last! with 
sails full of soft Arabian airs and the sun fast 
sinking to his desert bed ! Dinner on deck under 
the awning and the wind sighing itself to sleep — 
a dinner such as one reads of in fairy tales of 
travel. Michel, the soft-eyed Syrian, gorgeously 
arrayed in vestments of purple and fine linen, 
stood by, praying that our appetites might last 
for ever, and that Providence would graciously 
grant him the privilege of satisfying us. Yussef 
was there in scarlet tarboosh and Oxford ties — 
for Yussef has burst the bonds of his nationality, 
and aspires to American — yes, even Californian 
— styles. Yussef waves a tuft of ostrich feathers 
over the " banged " forelocks of the fair, and is 
a great ladies' man. Habib flies to and fro and 
offers us course after course of dainty dishes that 
have come just from the hands of Antoine, the 
cook from Bagdad. There is magic in that word, 
for no one but a magician could conjure din- 
ners such as ours from the pocket kitchen in the 
forecastle. 



ON THE NILE. 137 

More pyramids for dessert, Sakkarah and all 
that, and a golden haze glorifying the forest 
palms of Memphis. Music meanwhile ; soft 
songs of loye, softer in the lips of these dark 
lovers than honey in the honeycomb ; weird 
songs, whose melodies floated vaguely on the air 
like iEolian harp music. The eyes of the singers 
are shut in ecstasy as they sit in a circle under 
the shadow of the great sail ; their hands beat 
time and their heads wag to the jingle of the 
shuddering tar and the deep throb of the dara- 
iuhheh. A twilight steals on us unawares, for 
we are all dreamers now. Just ahead of us is a 
great bend in the river, beyond which the wind 
drops dead and the current hurls us up under a 
beetling crag. The music ceases ; we all rush to 
arms ; with our hands we have touched the shore ; 
the earth is ground off and drops in at our open 
windows as the strong tide crowds our barge upon 
the shore. Now, Sarah ! and now, Job ! and 
others of your holy tribe, help these poor fellows 
who are groaning in spirit as they struggle to 
deliver us out of our peril. Free at last ; a sud- 
den silence falls on us. We drift with the cur- 
rent, and, looking up along the crest of the cliff 
at whose base we had been humbled, there tower 
the rugged walls of a Coptic convent. It was like 
a grave for stillness ; a few palms mourned over 
the solitude of the place and looked at their re- 
flections in the water ; the moon hung in their 



138 MASHALLAH ! 

branches, but shed no ray upon the forlorn bat- 
tlements that have been set against the fierce 
splendor of this Egyptian world — they were in 
deep and impenetrable shadow. Music again 
arose upon the breathless night ; Madame had 
stolen to the piano unobserved, and with the 
sympathetic touch of the artist she rendered the 
"Moonlight Sonata." 

Egypt ! Nile ! Beethoven ! in the 
yellow moonlight under the brooding palms ! We 
drifted to a safer shore and folded our wings 
like a night-bird ; for the wind was dead. And 
the evening and the morning were the first day ! 



XIV. 

AN ARABIAN NIGHT. 

Dahabeah Nitetis, on the Nile. 
As the novelty of our voyage wears off we 
begin to look forward to the choice hours of the 
day with joyful anticipation. The world is for- 
gotten. We never speak of it now, unless in re- 
calling some episode in our past life, which seems 
to us like a dream. Doubtless the state of the 
weather has much to do with this spiritual repose 
which we enjoy in common at intervals. Mean- 
while there are occasional bursts of enthusiasm on 



AN AKABIAN NIGHT. 139 

the part of some one member of our party that 
seem to us unwarranted, not to say inexcusable. 
Some folk are as sensitive as hair-triggers, and 
they not unfrequently "go off half-cocked." 
Happily, I don't travel with a mouthful of ex- 
clamation points, and the equilibrium is pre- 
served on board. Dinner is an event in our lives 
these days, but dinner happens to reach its crisis 
just at twilight, and there is nothing in all Egypt 
better than sunset and the after-glow and the 
divine night that follows. Last night the sun 
went down in a yellow mist that hung over the 
desert like a veil. It seemed as if the ancient 
mysteries were concealed beyond it, and that all 
the glow was the flame and the lurid smoke of 
sacrificial fires. I fancy it would not be very 
difficult to turn heathen in this heathenish land. 
Its superstitions begin to tell upon some of us 
already, in spite of two clerical fellow voyagers 
who are supposed to stand between us and perdi- 
tion. After that sunset came the exquisite twi- 
light and one of the landscapes peculiar to the 
Nile coast. Looking east over the water, which 
was as blue as the sea, the eye fell first upon a 
strip of juicy green meadow-land. Beyond it, a 
few miles back — two or three, perhaps — rose a 
low range of hills as bare as chalk and of the 
color of dust-powdered snow. The sky just above 
the hills — they were the Arabian hills — was of 
the brightest blue with a silver luster over it all. 



140 MASHALLAH ! 

There was a soft, rose-colored cliff to the left, 
and above, in the middle distance, in the midst 
of the plain beyond the meadow, stood a solitary 
tomb with its low dome and one melancholy palm 
beside it, the tomb and the palm as brown as 
chocolate, and not a living or moving thing in all 
that half of the visible world. By and by a thin, 
filmy haze gathered over the scene and absorbed 
it in tranquil and pathetic silence. The immense 
stars came forth suddenly, and seemed to float in 
mid-air, very close to us. You might almost have 
heard them twinkle, they were so big and so bril- 
liant. There were subdued voices in the cabin. 
Busy pens flew over the paper, inditing letters to 
that tedious world we have turned our backs 
upon or filling up page after page of the Nile 
journals, that shall hereafter wring our hearts 
with too fond memories of these shores. 

The crew dozed on the deck below me as I curled 
up in the corner of a deep divan, with my cigar 
alight, waiting for the late moonrise. The shad- 
ow of the big stars plunged in the river, or threw 
long golden wakes on the water that reached to 
the other shore. Barges drifted by us — mysteri- 
ous barges, that came like phantoms out of the 
shadow and resolved their colors into shadow 
again ; but not until we had hailed them, and 
learned from them how the changeable bars lay 
among the currents just above us. Sometimes 
an animated conversation was continued long 



AN ARABIAN NIGHT. 141 

after the passing barge had faded away in dark- 
ness, and the voices returned to us out of the 
air, growing fainter and fainter, like oft-repeated 
echoes. 

There was a wild gorge in the Arabian hills, 
where the chain drew near the shore. As we 
approached it, I saw that it was flooded with mel- 
low light. Soft breezes bore us slowly against 
the river current, and we noiselessly approached 
the mouth of the gorge. Oh, vale of wild en- 
chantment ! Fantastic crags leaped into the air 
and hung suspended by some mighty magic. Be- 
tween the golden walls, in the bed of the val- 
ley, a grove of palms rustled their plumes in 
the delicious air, and just above these palms rose 
the splendid moon. Every leaf was lustrous in 
its light ; every rock sparkled faintly, and out 
of the mouth of the valley poured a deluge of 
light, in which we were all crowned with glory 
and transfigured. Our barge was silver, our 
sails of softest silk, and bright flames played 
upon the waters under us. It was one of the 
gates of Paradise ! There was a great bend in the 
river, beyond the valley, and when we had round- 
ed it those gates were closed on us for ever and 
ever. The moon climbed up into heaven and 
did what she could to smother the stars ; they 
are not easily outshone in these crystal skies. 
The cabin went to sleep in a body. I hung 
about the ship, and burned my weed with the 



142 MASHALLAH ! 

spirit of one who offers a sacrifice to some ador- 
able but invisible object. I scented the incense 
of the nargileh and heard the water bubbling in 
the shell of the cocoanut pipes. I knew that the 
hasheesh-eaters were sleeping their fatal sleep (we 
have six of them in our crew). Very shortly one 
of these slaves of sleep began muttering to the 
moon in a kind of sing-song that attracted about 
him an audience of intent listeners. The story- 
teller reclined on his bed of rugs between decks ; 
the hatch was drawn back, and a great square of 
moonlight brought him into strong relief. Dark 
Nubians lay at full length on the deck, and lis- 
tened as stealthily as spies. Two or three of the 
hasheesh-eaters sat near and applauded the narra- 
tion with foolish delight, chuckling to themselves 
continually, and filling up the pauses in the nar- 
ration, when the narrator seemed to have dropped 
fast asleep, with expressions of their complete 
satisfaction. Yussef was near me ; we were lean- 
ing together over the rail, looking down upon the 
picturesque group below. He gave me, in his 
literal translation, fragment after fragment of this 
thousand and second tale just as it came from the 
lips of that hasheesh dreamer under the moon- 
light on the Nile. 

CHAPTER I. 

There was a king in Egypt who had three 
sons. About his palace was a royal garden ; in 



AN ARABIAN NIGHT. 113 

a chosen corner of the garden stood an apricot 
tree beloved of the King. Now, when it was 
summer, and the fruits were ripening, the King 
grew sorrowful, and sat alone in his chamber day 
after day ; so his sons went in to him, and said, 
"Sire, why sit you sorrowful and alone in the 
pleasantest days of the year ? " 

The King answered, "Behold, my apricots 
ripen, but as fast as they ripen they disappear in 
the night, and my life has become a burden to 
me in consequence of this thing." 

The elder son said, "Be of good cheer ; I will 
watch with the tree this night, and bring you the 
ripest fruit at daybreak." 

"God is great!" exclaimed the King, strok- 
ing his beard. His three sons kissed his hand 
and withdrew. 

CHAPTER II. 

When it was evening, the elder son went out 
and sat under the apricot tree, and bent his watch- 
ful eye among the branches ; the fruit ripened, 
but while it was very still the watcher slept, and 
when he awoke at dawn all that was ripe had 
been plucked out of the branches : and the King 
mourned again. 

Then spoke the second son : " Sire, I will 
watch to-night ! " So he watched and slept, and 
between watching and sleeping the tree was robbed 
again. 



144 MASHALLAH! 

On the third night the third son said : "Let 
me watch ; it may be I shall save the fruit." 

Then they laughed at him, for he was young 
and handsome. But at night he girded on his 
sword, and took in his hands a ball of snow, and 
went out to watch. Placing the snow in a branch 
of a tree, he lay down under it. When he slept, 
the melting snow fell, drop by drop, on his eye- 
lids, and he kept watch until midnight. At mid- 
night he heard a movement among the branches. 
The stars were bright, but he saw nothing. He 
arose and cut the air with his sword, till he heard 
a cry of pain, and the ripe fruit fell at his feet. 

At daybreak he returned to the palace, offered 
his trophies to the King on a tray of ebony set 
with jewels, and the King fell upon his neck and 
kissed him. 

CHAPTER III. 

The youngest son said to his brothers, "Let 
us capture the thief." He took with him his 
sword and a long cord, and went out to the apri- 
cot tree ; the ground was stained with blood, and 
the three followed the bloody stains till they 
came to the mouth of a deep pit. The youngest 
son tied the rope about his waist, and his brothers 
let him down into the pit, deeper and deeper, un- 
til he came to a cave in the side of it. The floor 
of the cave was blood-stained, and he entered 
cautiously, and groped about until he came upon 



AN ARABIAN NIGHT. 145 

a marvelous garden in the under- world. In the 
midst of the garden was a palace, and in a win- 
dow of the palace sat a lady of such beauty that 
the boy exclaimed at it. She turned to him with 
unfeigned joy, and cried, " Abdallah" (it was his 
name), "at last we meet !" 

Then she bade him steal in at the palace door 
and find a genie sleeping in a lower chamber. 
" Smite him as he sleeps," said she ; "but, when 
he bids you smite again, beware, for the first blow 
is fatal, the second restores him to life." 

Abdallah entered the palace chamber and smote 
the genie, who cried, " Smite again ! " And then 
he died in his own blood. 

The fair lady fell upon Abdallah's breast, and 
tore from her arm a bracelet of wonderful work- 
manship, which she clasped upon his wrist as a 
token. 

Together they returned to the mouth of the 
cave, and the lady sat in a noose while the broth- 
ers drew her out of the pit. 

When the rope was let down again, Abdallah 
seized it, but the brothers, who were filled with 
enyy, no sooner felt his weight upon the rope 
than they let it drop, and Abdallah fell into the 
bottom of the pit. 

CHAPTER IY. 

Stunned and bruised, Abdallah lay for some 
time on the heap of rubbish at the bottom of the 
10 



146 MASHALLAH ! 

pit, which had fortunately broken his fall. When 
he had sufficiently recovered, he looked about him 
and discovered another cavern close at hand. He 
entered, threaded its mazes, and came at last into 
a great lovely land, through which he wandered 
hour after hour. Faint with hunger and thirst, 
he hailed with joy the low walls of a cottage 
standing under a distant hill. 

A woman sat alone in the doorway. He 
begged of her a draught of water and a morsel of 
bread. These she gave him, but added : " Drink 
little, stranger ! for our fountain is guarded by 
a dragon who is so watchful that only when he 
sleeps can we obtain our life-giving water." Ab- 
dallah offered his services to the good woman in 
return for her kindness, and was directed to her 
flocks over the brow of the hill, and warned to 
keep them from the jaws of the hungry dragon. 
The lad went out with his sword and drew the 
goats about him. He wandered from one hill top 
to another until he came to the dragon's fount, 
and there he paused. The dragon slept with his 
huge paw over the mouth of the fountain, so that 
little or no water escaped from under it. Abdal- 
lah approached with caution, having first taken 
in his arms a young kid, and, when his step awoke 
the dragon, he threw the kid into the open jaws. 
At that moment he rushed upon the monster and 
slew him with a dexterous thrust in a vital part, 
and then returned to the old woman and related 



AN ARABIAN NIGHT. 147 

his adventure. No sooner was the good news 
known in that wonder- world/than the King sum- 
moned the young victor, and, having embraced 
him, pressed upon him a favorite daughter and a 
royal palace, but these gifts were refused by Ab- 
dallah, who desired only to be restored to his own 
people. 

" That is beyond my power," said the King, 
sadly, and he gave the boy a splendid garment 
and a purse of gold. 

Then Abdallah went forth into the lonesome 
land, and when it was in the heat of the day he 
entered a forest to seek repose. A great serpent 
swung from a bough across his path. There was 
a fierce battle, but Abdallah won, and the serpent 
fell dead at his feet in a heap of glittering coils. 
Fearing to enter the forest, he threw himself on 
the grass and fell asleep. The sun stole on him 
as the hours waned, and when he awoke he found 
himself covered by a deep shadow. Lifting his 
eyes, he beheld an enormous eagle hovering over 
him, and protecting him from the sun with its 
wings. 

"Thanks," said the eagle ; "you have put to 
death my enemy, who for many seasons has climbed 
into my nest and devoured my eaglets : what ser- 
vice can I render you ?" 

Abdallah cried with joy, "0 eagle ! bear me 
to my kingdom in the upper world." 

The eagle answered, "Kill yonder sheep, cut 



148 MASHALLAH ! 

it in pieces and place it on my back ; then mount 
beside it ; when I turn my head to the left, feed 
me, and when I turn my head to the right, feed 
me!" 

Abdallah did as he was commanded, and with 
one sweep of his mighty wings the eagle, spite 
of his burden, sped swiftly through the air ! 

chapter y. 

The wood and the meadow grew shadowy 
under them as they winged their way through 
space. By and by the eagle turned his head to 
the left, and Abdallah put meat into his beak ; 
anon he turned to the right, and was fed again. 

They soared on and on, and the eagle was fed 
until the last morsel of flesh had disappeared. 
Again, the eagle looked back for food. In a mo- 
ment Abdallah had seized his sword and cut a 
bit of flesh from his thigh ; this he gave his de- 
liverer, and they continued their airy journey. 

When the night was come and gone, and it 
was broad daylight, the eagle descended in the 
edge of the city where Abdallah lived. 

"Abdallah," said the eagle, "you have fed 
me with your own flesh ; replace it and the wound 
will heal," and with that the bird put out of his 
beak the flesh with which it had been fed. " Take 
also," it added, "a feather from under my wing, 
fasten it to your spear, and, when you hunt, your 
aim shall be fatal." 



AN ARABIAN NIGHT. 149 

Abdallah plucked the feather and bound up 
his wound, and, when he turned to thank his de- 
liverer, the black wings of the bird were already 
fading in the heavens. 



CHAPTER VI. 

When Abdallah had sought a cafe, to regale 
himself with the nargileh and the gossip of the 
town, he learned that on that very day the King's 
elder son, his brother, would wed a mysterious 
fair lady, and that the tournament would be more 
splendid than any ever before known in the king- 
dom. He sought the arena at once. He seized 
a javelin, and barbed it with his magic plume. 
The King and the fair lady sat in state. The 
King's sons entered the arena and haughtily chal- 
lenged the populace. No one responded but Ab- 
dallah, who strode proudly to the foot of the 
throne, and prostrated himself. The trumpet 
summoned to the test. Abdallah toyed for a mo- 
ment with his fatal spear, and then slew his an- 
tagonists, one after the other. 

In a moment he made himself known to his 
royal father and his bride. Her token was proof 
of his identity, and the marriage feast, instead of 
coming to an untimely close, was prolonged for 
seven days and seven nights, during which time 
wine flowed as water and all the luxuries of life 
were free. 



150 MASHALLAH ! 

When the story was ended we were all silent. 
The wind filled our sail, but we seemed scarcely 
to move in the water, there was such a stillness 
brooding oyer us. While we were waiting for an 
event to unseal our lips, we were startled by the 
unmistakable crash of timber and cries of despair 
that came to us oyer the water. I had scarcely 
time to turn to Yussef, who was still at my side, 
and cry " What was that ? " when our sail began 
to swell and the water to roar about us in a mo- 
mentary gale. The ropes were loosened imme- 
diately. Eyery soul in the ship was on the alert 
in ten seconds, but we had a narrow escape. 
These wind-bolts fly out of the mountain gorges 
and take you when you are least prepared. They 
tear the great lateen sails from the masts, driye 
smaller boats on shore, and sometimes wreck the 
heayily laden barges that trade between the Nile 
ports. We escaped with only a little fright, but 
our neighbor was damaged considerably. Her 
loss was our gain, as it happened. Had we been 
to windward, lapped in the lazy dream of the 
"Arabian Nights/' we might haye seen our hun- 
dred and seyenty feet of spar borne into the air 
like a winged jayelin, and where would our Nubia 
haye been then, and our cozy sleep that came a 
little later while we were tied up under a high 
bank waiting for sunrise ? 



EGYPTIAN VILLAGE LIFE. 151 

XV. 

EGYPTIAN VILLAGE LIFE. 

Dahabeah Nitetis, on the Nile. 

The delicious days drift by unreckoned. Hour 
by hour we cast off the customs of our time, one 
after another, and grow luxurious and sensuous, 
taking in the landscape as if it were something 
that was provided for our physical enjoyment. 
The soul is in a transition state. It sleeps in its 
cocoon. But in that sleep it is putting forth new 
wings, and the old life of the New World can never 
again seem to it the same as of yore. When a 
man puts the Nile between him and his former 
self, he has turned into his heart a mighty flood, 
the secret sources of which may be the windows 
of heaven for aught we know ; and though that 
heart were as foul as the Augean stables, if it be a 
whole heart, it shall become whiter than snow. 

We don't give ourselves up to the physical lux- 
ury of this inland voyage without suitable mental 
preparation. There are plenty of books built 
expressly for these latitudes. You find them in 
the hands of every passenger, and the text is the 
chief subject under discussion at table, at tea, in 
the twilight or dark, and at frequent intervals be- 
tween meals. Look at our shelves and you will 
see Herodotus, Diodorus, Strabo, and Wilkinson's 



152 MASHALLAH ! 

"Ancient Egyptians." With these romantic 
records of the life that was we lay a foundation 
for a proper appreciation of the life that now is. 

Here is Lane's "Modern Egyptians," which 
we fly to as if it was the yery Bible of Egypt — 
only we go ever so much of tener inasmuch as it 
is not— "Eothen," Curtis's "Nile Notes," the 
works of Warburton, Piazzi-Smyth, Lord Lindsay, 
Curzon, Stanley, Macgregor, Prime, and poor Lady 
Duff-Gordon, who drifted to and fro over these 
waters, year after year, patiently awaiting that 
death that continually threatened her. We have 
what I have found the most charming book of all, 
the "Diary" of the late Harriet Martineau. I 
do not suppose we have read one half of these 
books, but there is a consolation in being supplied 
when you are pushing out into the undiscovered 
land ; a land which is as fresh to you as if no eye 
but yours had been permitted to question its won- 
derful hieroglyphics. We bury ourselves in the 
depths of the divans on deck, under the awning, 
fill our laps with books, and then turn our smoked 
glasses on the shimmering landscape and are lost 
in reverie. 

As the river is continually bending to east 
or to west, we drift from shore to shore. The 
strong north wind bears us steadily, and often 
very rapidly, against the powerful current, but 
when the wind falls we fall with it, and immedi- 
ately take to our canvas and consider the pros- 



EGYPTIAN VILLAGE LIFE. 153 

pects. If there is not a head wind we are safe, for 
we can send our men on shore and be towed up 
under the bank as tamely as if this were the Erie 
Canal instead of the mighty Nile. Tacking is 
hard work ; from ten to fifteen miles a day is all 
we can hope for in the best of tacking weather. If 
the wind is from the south, there is nothing left 
for us but to tie up to the bank and wait for bet- 
ter luck. Yet this is by no means bad luck. At 
such times, unless there is a high wind full of fly- 
ing sand, we go on shore and walk for miles and 
miles through the green fields and among the palm 
groves. We are seldom alone — all the shore of 
the Nile is thickly populated. We pass villages 
almost every hour, on one side of the river or the 
other. There are scattered houses under scat- 
tering palms — the homes of shepherds and of 
husbandmen, and of the slaves who toil night 
and day at the shadoof, giving the thirsty earth 
to drink from this fountain of perennial life. 

There is good shooting on either hand, and we 
have a couple of good shots to match it. Yussef 
is ever ready for the chase, and "Bambino," the 
pet bachelor of the crowd, can wing his pigeon 
not infrequently. When we approach a village 
the rifles are got in order, for the shooting is im- 
mense in the vicinity. Every Egyptian village 
seems to have been built solely for the accommo- 
dation of some millions of pigeons. Their houses 
rise like towers about the suburbs, and are far 



154 MASHALLAH ! 

more imposing than the habitations of their keep- 
ers. The pigeon towers are built of repeated lay- 
ers of earthen pots, with the mouth on the inside 
of the tower. Numerous dry branches are insert- 
ed in the outer wall for perches, and the walls, 
which are of mud, are frequently whitewashed. 
The birds are kept for their guano, which is used 
for fuel. One can not burn trees on the edge of 
the desert. Many of the pigeon towers look not 
unlike the pillars of old temples. They are the 
chief feature in every landscape, and, when we 
look over the palms that have crowded down into 
a long point in the bend of the river and see blue 
clouds of pigeons blown across the sky, we listen 
for the click of Yussef s rifle, and know that 
" Bambino " is meditating a slaughter of the inno- 
cents. The Egyptian pigeon, when it comes to 
drink, lights in the Nile like a duck and rises like 
a sea-gull. One might easily slaughter a half 
bushel at a single broadside, by merely letting fly 
into a swarm of them as they settle in the wa- 
ter close to shore. We did it once or twice, and 
saved the spoils with the aid of a half-dozen little 
naked Arabs, who plunged in and secured them 
for us. Though our table is seldom without pig- 
eon-pie, freshly stocked at almost every village 
we come to, no one has as yet made any objection 
to our helping ourselves in consideration of a fee 
by no means exorbitant. 
• Turning over the pages of my journal, I am 



EGYPTIAN VILLAGE LIFE. 155 

amazed to find how slight the incidents of the 
voyage have been thus far, and yet how full of 
lazy experience. We have taken several towns 
by storm, and surprised the sleepy inhabitants 
at all hours of the day and night. At Feshun 
we came to shore in splendid style, running up 
so close to the bank that a beetle might have 
come on board without wetting his feet. We 
wanted milk and eggs, and some other palatable 
trifles, and so we stopped for ten minutes ; and 
how we astonished the easy-going Mussulmans 
with our absurd jollity ! 

Maghagha, only fourteen miles farther up 
stream, might have been reached in a couple of 
hours, but it wasn't. The wind dropped ; our 
men went on shore, took a long rope over their 
shoulders, and tugged away for four hours. They 
called on their saints in soft, melancholy voices, 
that sounded to us on board like the drone of bees. 
Sometimes one of them would let go the rope, 
drop down on the grassy bank, and refresh himself 
with a cigarette. Sometimes they all came to a 
halt and squatted in a row, chatting and laugh- 
ing and calling to us in such good humor that it 
is difficult to believe tracking is not the j oiliest 
sport in the world. Little puffs of wind spring 
up from time to time, and the barge responded so 
generously that we ran ahead of our team on 
shore, and they were obliged to cast off the rope 
and follow us at a brisk trot. The wind finally 



156 MASHALLAH ! 

dodged ahead of us, and we were booked for the 
night. Maghagha was indefinitely postponed. 

After hours of toil, when the crew seem so fa- 
tigued that the man of feeling is apt to have his 
heart wrung, the toilers finish their duties and sit 
down under the big sail to sing and laugh, and 
even dance their fantastic dances, as if they were 
in the midst of a holiday. Their good nature, 
coupled with their willing spirit, is a perpetual 
subject of amazement to us all. With the dawn 
we came upon Maghagha just in season for the 
morning milk. Half a dozen girls brought bottles 
of it to the river bank, and awaited the passing 
customer that was sure to slacken sail for a mo- 
ment or two at least. At Minieh it was already 
dark when we tied up for the night, but a proces- 
sion of lanterns was speedily formed, and we strolled 
through the narrow and crowded streets, which 
were blockaded with bazaars, and finally came 
home to the Nitetis with an escort of half a hun- 
dred Arabs, big and little, howling at our heels. 

Every town furnishes an armed guard for the 
protection of the boats that lie by the shore through 
the night. There are always two at least, so that 
one may keep the other awake. They light a bon- 
fire and hover over it these cool nights, and chal- 
lenge the specters that haunt their dreams, and 
sometimes startle us all, and the whole village as 
well, by discharging a rifle in the dead stillness of 
the night. Ten thousand dogs lift up their voices 



EGYPTIAN VILLAGE LIFE. 157 

in response, and the night is hideous from that 
hour. Indeed, the perpetual barking chorus that 
falls upon your ear as you course the Nile is suffi- 
cient to lead you safely into port, though it were 
the blackest night in Egypt. That signal is more 
effective than forty fog- whistles. 

There are Coptic convents, planted on the 
shores, and so walled about that no signs of life are 
visible. Perhaps a solitary palm stretches its head 
above the convent wall and waves its gray plumes, 
like flags of distress. A half-witted Arab swam 
out to us three days ago, and was on board for an 
hour, to the great delight of the crew. This man, 
who was a splendid specimen of physical develop- 
ment, leaped into the river some distance ahead 
of us, and climbed over our stern by the rudder- 
post. Then, unwinding his turban, he girded it 
about his loins and came forward to salute us. 
Our old captain fell upon his breast and kissed 
him repeatedly. Every one of the crew had his 
turn at the saint, for the simple are thought sa- 
cred in this country. Having broken bread with 
the sailors, who were as happy as children with 
this new plaything, he again embraced them all, 
put his wardrobe on top of his head, and dropped 
overboard. When we last saw him he was strug- 
gling with the strong current, which the Arabs 
fear, but, as he was an excellent swimmer, he surely 
reached the shore in safety. At several villages 
we met these sacred idiots, who are always highly 



158 MASHALLAH ! 

esteemed. They frequently bear around with them 
the turban or a fragment of some garment of a 
dead saint. Wrapping this about a long staff, they 
beg from town to town. On one occasion a wo- 
man followed us for half a mile, running along 
the shore with a sheik's relic on a pole. She 
was rewarded with a liberal contribution of black 
bread which the crew tossed over the water to her. 
Nor do we lack other visitors these days. Wives 
and mothers of the male relatives of the crew make 
their appearance at the lucky moment, and we run 
into shore to allow our sailor-boys a brief embrace. 
Dahabeahs salute us, and we have grown indif- 
ferent to their salutations. We begin to realize 
that we were a set of very enthusiastic Americans, 
as unused to the Nile as possible, during that first 
exciting week of the voyage. At present we are 
as indifferent as any one on the river ; yet we have 
exchanged visits with some few strangers who 
chanced to come to land at the same time and place 
with us. Our second captain sustains the reputa- 
tion of our ship for amiability. He has a line of 
wives along the whole Nile coast. They are lo- 
cated at convenient intervals, and nothing but a 
head wind can interrupt the continuous joy of his 
domestic life. If we find that we are losing the 
best part of a stiff breeze ; if we are ashore when 
we should be afloat ; if we are apparently hunting 
up all the sandbars in the river and hanging to 
them as we never hung before, we know that the 



EGYPTIAN VILLAGE LIFE. 159 

second captain has repaired to some bosom or 
other of his family, and that the man at the mast- 
head may cry " Eais Mustapha ! " till his throat 
splits and the winds are weary with his crying, 
but that second captain will salute the " light of 
his harem " with as much deliberation as if there 
were but one of her. 

And so we come to Siout, the capital of Up- 
per Egypt, two hundred and fifty miles from 
Cairo ; Siout, successor to the ancient Lycopolis, 
"the city of the wolves " ; Siout, with its four- 
teen minarets ; its choice bazaars, than which 
even Cairo has few finer ; its groves of palm and 
sycamore and acacias ; its camels that swing 
through the narrow streets, laden with bales of rich 
goods, and drive you to the wall as if a Christian 
had no rights in a city of five-and-twenty thousand 
souls, but a single thousand of whom are Chris- 
tians. The clay pipe-bowls of Siout are world-fa- 
mous. You see the skillful workmen in the ba- 
zaars molding the soft clay into dainty shapes and 
staining them with scarlet dyes. You see the 
treasures that are brought by caravan from Dar- 
foor and the very heart of Africa. You breathe 
the perfumes of Arabia, and your soul is satisfied 
with the sight of latticed windows and dark flash- 
ing eyes ; with handsome men and lovely boys, 
such as the Arabian poets celebrate in sonnets ; 
with mosques and open courts cooled by babbling 
fountains, and by the picturesque life of the East 



160 MASHALLAH ! 

which is so well displayed here. Then you get 
out of the city through winding streets nearly 
roofed over by the houses that lean toward one 
another, and dodge a second camel with its cum- 
brous freights. (Do you remember how Amina 
made excuse for the wound in her cheek when the 
young merchant kissed her too savagely ? Turn 
over your Arabian tales, and when found, etc.) 
And, crossing the green meadows of the Nile, you 
climb the cliffs above the town and muse on the 
historic tombs beneath you. Here the ancient 
Christians found sanctuary ; here the prophetic 
John of Lycopolis dwelt above fifty years in a cell 
"without once opening the door, without seeing 
the face of a woman, without tasting any food 
that had been prepared by fire or any human art." 
At your feet lies the lovely town, submerged in 
its green garden. As far as the eye can reach the 
broad Nile turns again and again, casting a green 
shadow into the desert, the desert that like a sea 
flows to this green shore, its tawny waves burst- 
ing through the walls of the City of Sepulchres, 
close at hand, submerging half the tombs in sand. 
Away yonder, over the rim of the horizon, there 
are island oases, but who shall find them save the 
Bedawee, who have a mariner's knowledge of the 
stars ? 

The breath of evening ascends to us, sweet with 
the odor of oranges and limes ; it comes to us 
over the sandy waste at the foot of the crags, 



TEMPLES AND TOMBS. 161 

where there are skulls bleaching and a litter of 
human bones, but the sand and the winds and the 
jackals have cleansed them of all impurities, and 
they are no longer even ugly to look at. In this 
Egyptian Eden, under the shadow of this hermit- 
haunted hill, tradition whispers that the early 
youth of our Lord was passed after the flight from 
Palestine. 



XVI. 

TEMPLES AKD TOMBS. 

Dahabeah Nitetis, on the Nile. 
What would I not give could I again expe- 
rience the emotion I felt at my first sight of an 
Egyptian temple ! Fortunately the dusk had 
thrown a veil over us, and in the exquisite deli- 
cacy of the fading light we drifted slowly up the 
mysterious river through the dreamy land, and saw 
on the eastern shore a cluster of immense columns 
towering against the sky. I believe we passed it 
without uttering a syllable. The serene silence of 
the evening was intensified by the solemnity of 
this ruin, and, as we were borne away from it be- 
fore the gentle breeze, we heard from time to time 
the plunging of some object in the river, the 
splash of the water, and then all was silent again. 
Later we grew so familiar with this sound that it 
11 



162 MASHALLAHt 

ceased to attract any comment whatever. It was 
the tribute of the earth to the inexorable current 
of the stream. From year to year the river changes 
its course. Eating away the shore on the one 
hand, it deposits a soft bed of soil on some sandy 
bar, and there the watchful husbandman — who 
keeps his finger on the pulse of the river and notes 
every change in it, even the slightest — lays open 
the furrows in this new gift of the bountiful Nile, 
and in a few days the sun is magnetizing the 
young shoots of the cucumbers and melons that 
will presently have stretched their slender stems 
to the water's edge. The Nile is wearing away the 
bank below this temple, Kom Umboo, and by and 
by those superb columns, that have stood there in 
their desert solitude for thousands of years, will 
bow their lofty capitals and topple over into the 
stream. Again and again we come upon villages 
that have been undermined. Houses that were 
built at a reasonable remove from the water have 
lost their outer walls, and stand on the brink of 
total destruction with their shattered chambers 
open to the sun. Like a great serpent, the river 
unfolds its glistening amber coils as it creeps 
through the valley, swaying from side to side. 
Sometimes it flows under abrupt cliffs that are 
perforated with mummy chambers, tier upon tier. 
It is often difficult to climb the steep walls of the 
mountain, and enter these tombs ; nor is it profit- 
able in many instances, for the caves are despoiled 



TEMPLES AND TOMBS. 163 

of their antique treasures, and are now half filled 
with sand and haunted by clouds of filthy bats. 

The tombs of Beni Hassan are cut in one of 
the hard strata of a hill that lies to the east of 
the Nile bank, about a mile distant. The river 
once flowed much closer to the base of the hill, 
but has turned back again into the plain, and left 
a deposit of rich soil that is just now covered with 
waving grain, breast-high, as we plow through it 
on our donkeys, and is of the most brilliant green. 
As we threaded palm groves, and hailed each 
other over the grain that was tossing in the wind, 
and rolling green billows from end to end across 
the broad fields, we were cautioned by our con- 
siderate donkey-boys to keep a discreet silence, 
inasmuch as this district has a bad reputation, 
and has long been infested by Bedawee brigands. 
Up one of the lonely gorges of the hills we actu- 
ally saw the black tents of the tribe, but no one 
sought to molest us. They were less fortunate 
who visited the grottoes in former years, and so 
incorrigible had the Beni Hassanites become that 
the Ibrahim Pasha caused the whole village to be 
destroyed. It looked like a small edition of Pom- 
peii, as we rode through it on our return from the 
tombs. 

The houses were all roofless, windows and 
doors wide open, many walls entirely thrown 
down, and the whole a picture of melancholy 
desolation. We rode single-file through the ruins, 



164 MASHALLAH! 

picking our way among mud blocks and frag- 
ments of wall nearly as large as our donkeys. 
Several times we passed directly through houses, 
in at one door and out at the other. No one 
thinks of restoring any part of the old Tillage ; 
in fact, the survivors are more pleasantly situated 
in a fine palm-grove a couple of miles removed 
from the ruin. The grottoes of Beni Hassan are, 
next to the Pyramids, the oldest known monu- 
ments in Egypt. The fact scarcely suggests itself 
as you enter these chambers, hewn out of the solid 
rock, plastered and elaborately frescoed. The 
colors are almost as bright to-day as they were 
when the artist — who, by the way, has been mum- 
mified these fifty centuries — concluded his con- 
tract and drew his ducats. On a background of 
the most delicate shades of green there are infinite 
multitude's of figures, portraying all the manners 
and customs of that ancient life. Even then 
there must have been dwellings of pretentious 
architecture, for they are imitated here. Stone 
architraves extend from column to column. Pos- 
sibly, at that time, it was thought impossible to 
sustain a roof without them, though it were a 
mountain over your head. A little later, as in 
the tombs at Thebes, the architraves are omitted. 
Here stand columns hewn out of the living rock 
in the earliest Egyptian style. Naturally, they 
are copies from nature — the stalks of four water 
plants bound together and crowned with lotus or 



TEMPLES AND TOMBS. 165 

pappus buds. It is miraculous that any part of 
these tombs is left, save the bare hollow, inasmuch 
as the painting may be easily effaced, the plaster 
removed in slices, and the rock itself cut with 
the blade of a penknife. The insignificant names 
that one is sure to stumble upon, where they are 
least worthy to be found, have begun to creep 
over the delicate paintings in these tombs ; and 
now that Egyptian travel has become so common, 
and tourists go about in herds, like cattle seeking 
where they may browse, and in all cases leaving 
their tracks behind them, in a few years these 
records of the earliest art of the earth that has 
been preserved to us will have entirely disappeared. 
Turning the leaves of my Nile journal, I find 
many a passage that properly belongs to the story 
of the Nile, but as I read them, one after the 
other, they seem so much alike that I throw them 
aside in despair. Doubtless the river life is mo- 
notonous, yet it never wearies me. What if I 
record, day after day, the morning mists, its 
saffron-tinted east, its silvery west still under the 
sweet influence of the declining moon ; the river, 
like crystal, with its shores in deepest shadow and 
its dark palms reversed in the watery mirror, as 
black as ebony ? Then the bright, the white light 
of the day, and the lazy hours with book and 
pipe under the awning on the breezy deck ; the 
divine twilight, when the whole race gathers at 
the cool margin of the river to refresh itself after 



166 MASHALLAH ! 

the heat of the day. Ugly buffaloes stand up to 
their nostrils in water, tossing the spray oyer their 
heads. Naked children sport among them like 
young water-gods. The Arabian heat ; an after- 
noon of deep and dreamless sleep ; a twilight that 
keeps me from dinner, with palm-groves jutting 
out into the river ; still, shadowy barges bound- 
ing over the face of the waters, and soft songs 
that waken an echo in the heart and haunt me 
almost every hour. At Mineh, in the dusk, there 
was a mosque full of chanting boys and loud- 
sighing dervishes, and a sheik's tomb lit with 
a hundred lamps from within, and looking like a 
roc's egg poised on end. It was inexpressibly 
lovely, but a disagreeable odor drove us out from 
under the shore, and we drifted down stream 
among sand shoals, noisy with deep - throated 
Egyptian frogs, who snored hideously all night. 

The majority of the temples of Egypt stand so 
near the Nile shore that they are plainly visible 
from the deck of our dahabeah. At morning or 
at evening we see a superb monument in the dim 
distance. If the wind is fair, we draw rapidly 
toward it, and in an hour or two find the Nitetis 
running up to the nearest point from which the 
temple may be visited. Two or three of the 
sailors leap ashore, drive in our portable stakes, 
and make fast. After this feat is accomplished 
they usually squat on the bank in a row, light 
their cigarettes, chat, sing, wander off into the 



TEMPLES AND TOMBS. 167 

fields to gather lentils and eat them with huge 
relish ; it is their play-time ; it is our task, for we 
at once begin preparing for the exploration of the 
temples, lest a fair breeze tempt us to hasten on 
and omit this pleasing duty until our return voy- 
age. Usually we take donkeys to carry us to the 
site of the ruins. Too often these little beasts are 
utterly unfit to carry any burden. Their backs 
are raw ; their stirrupless saddles are tied on with 
odd bits of cord, or, perhaps, are merely balanced 
on the sharp backs of the unhappy creatures, with- 
out any fastenings whatever. We have all taken 
our turn at plunging headlong into the sand, and 
fortunately have each escaped without injury. 

Over dusty roads, through broad fields of grain, 
under palm-groves and along the edges of mud 
villages, we crouch in the heat of the sun, and 
reach at last, with unfeigned joy, the propylon. 
It was not yet sunrise when we came to the gates 
of Edfoo, one of the best-preserved temples of 
the Nile. The air was still fresh, for these nights 
are deliciously cool. The great courts with their 
sculptured columns, the numerous chambers 
sacred to the ancient rites of the temple worship, 
the massive wall that incloses it — all these un- 
marred relics of a mighty race impressed silence 
upon us, and we paced reverently the immense 
hall, where we appeared ridiculously small in 
comparison. Our torches brought out the color 
that still enlivens the sculpture, though much of 



168 MASH ALLAH ! 

that color and even some of the sculpturing have 
been obliterated by the thick smoke of the in- 
numerable torches that have been burned here for 
generations past. One little fellow, who was look- 
ing forward to a suitable reward in the future, 
followed us from hall to hall and lit matches from 
time to time, holding them aloft with as much 
gravity as if they were really capable of throwing 
some light on the hieroglyphics that coyer the 
temple in every part. Leaning from the lofty 
capital of the eastern pylon, the prospect was 
glorious — the temple court beneath us ; flocks of 
doves darting to and fro among the columns of 
the court, showing us their pale-blue backs ; the 
green lawns, as soft as velvet, stretching to the 
amber Nile on the one hand and the desert hills 
on the other ; the village, with its open houses, 
half of them unroofed, or only partly thatched 
with palm boughs, all huddled close together un- 
der the high walls of the temple. 

When the sun rose this village came to life, 
and there was a chorus of backsheesh raised by a 
multitude of baby Arabs, who danced boisterously 
and cried to us incessantly as if we were indeed 
the gods. The town of Keneh, with its famous 
water jars, lies opposite Denderah, a temple as 
perfect as Edfoo, though smaller. It has once 
been buried, and is still so deep in the soil that 
you can touch the capitals as you walk around 
the outer wall, and to enter the temple is like 



TEMPLES AND TOMBS. 169 

descending into an enormous cellar. It is only at 
Denderah and Edf oo that I have been able to real- 
ize anything of the life of these temples. They 
are so utterly dead, so cruelly ruined, and their 
age is so inconceivable, that I find myself wander- 
ing about them in a state of utter disbelief. It is 
difficult enough to believe your eyes — you can not 
hope to do more than that — and the eyes see only 
the dust-covered, dust-colored sanctuary of a race 
and a religion that are returned to dust. At Ed- 
foo, leaning from that eastern pylon and dream- 
ing over the record of the temple that was five-and- 
ninety years in coming to completion, I seemed 
to see for just one moment the splendid ceremoni- 
als of the dedication, when rivers of wine actually 
flooded the court, perfumed oils freighted the air, 
and men and women gave themselves up to the 
lascivious rites of the feast for days together. As 
I thought of this I looked about me and saw every 
stone in its place, and then I was convinced. 

At Esneh a temple stands in the midst of a 
squalid village, and is buried to the roof in earth. 
One grows indifferent to ruins that are not impres- 
sive in a land that has so great a store of the won- 
derful. Esneh, therefore, half covered with mud 
huts that hang upon it like wasps' nests, was 
rather disappointing, and we lounged through the 
village until Michel should have finished his mar- 
keting. The sun was intensely hot, the air filled 
with dust, and the day a nervous one. Even the 



170 MASHALLAH ! 

Ghawazes, who have given fame to the village, 
fail now to attract. The bazaars were faintly per- 
fumed with rose-attar ; naked children, with dis- 
tended stomachs, followed us through the narrow, 
filthy streets, begging, and when we turned on 
them they fled in utmost confusion. We paused at 
an open door for a moment. Four women crouched 
in a lonely room wailing for the dead. All but 
one of these mourners ceased as we approached, 
and turned tearful eyes upon us. Then they 
stretched forth a hand and murmured "Back- 
sheesh ! " Their jaws were dropped, and they 
looked the picture of despair ; but their natural 
instinct was too much for them, and they whis- 
pered " Backsheesh." The fourth woman was 
bowed down in the corner with her forehead 
turned to the wall. She took not the slightest 
notice of us. There was surely some truth in her 
sorrow. While we idled about the town an addi- 
tion was made to our passenger list, a small gray 
monkey, who grew homesick immediately, and 
looked back to shore with the roundest and most 
serious eyes conceivable. After dark we drifted 
away from Esneh, while its black profile was out- 
lined against the west, dotted with a few twink- 
ling lights. Everybody, men, women, and chil- 
dren, seemed to be singing with melancholy voices. 
Our crew began their river song, as if music was 
infectious, and in the intervals the voices from 
the almost invisible shore responded as long as 



TEMPLES AND TOMBS. 171 

the light breeze and the unruffled river were able 
to bear their mournful melody. Out of the dark 
that evening came these lines to relieve the mo- 
notony of my journal : 

FOR A SIGN. 

Loafing along the Nile bank 

As lonesome as I could be, 
The twilight deepened among the palms, 

The river spread like a sea. 

I heard the cry of the night-bird, 

The peevish and pitiful cry ; 
The barges opened their great white wings, 

And silently drifted by. 

The soft air breathed upon me, 

And marvelous music it bore ; 
'Twas the mellow trill of the rustic flutes 

Blown off from the farther shore. 

Looking across the water, 

I laughed aloud in my glee — 
For out of the lap of the purple west 

A young star winked at me. 

A young, fair star, and lonely, 
That seemed to wink and to smile, 

And to fish for me with a golden thread 
Dropped into the mighty Nile. 

And I said to myself that moment, 
While watching its track of light — 

I will never feel lost in the desert again 
With this pillar of fire by night! 



172 MASHALLAH ! 

XVII. 

THEBES. 

Dahabeah Nitetis, on the Nile. 
It was with a tinge of regret that I looked 
over the plains on the evening of our arrival at 
Luxor — the port of Thebes — and saw the golden 
columns of the most marvelous ruin in the world 
flush in the lurid sunset, and then fade into a 
twilight that was presently glorified by the pres- 
ence of the mellow Egyptian moon a little past 
the full. There was such pleasure in anticipating 
the exploration of Thebes, knowing that after 
that nothing on the Nile would affect us to the 
same degree, inasmuch as all else suffers by com- 
parison ; there was such satisfaction in the thought 
that we had not yet reached the climax, that we 
must still "season our admiration for a while/' 
that when we swept up to the steep bank at 
Luxor, and were received with a discharge of 
musketry from the four Consular Agents, as well 
as salutes from several dahabeahs that had arrived 
before us, my spirit faltered, and I regretted that 
the hour had come so soon. Our crew gave three 
hearty cheers and a "tiger," for they knew well 
enough that one of the several sheep presented to 
them during the voyage was to be forthcoming 
at Luxor, for mutton, though offered up a daily 



THEBES. 173 

sacrifice at our table, is a luxury in the forecastle, 
where lentils and black bread comprise the usual 
bill of fare. 

Some of my fellow voyagers hastened on shore 
before dinner, and returned from the Consulate 
laden with home letters and home papers. I had 
purposely cut myself off from communication 
with the world, though the sight of the telegraph 
poles that follow the Nile into Nubia are a contin- 
ual assurance of the utter hopelessness of trying 
to forget it. In the midst of the stupendous 
ruins that lie on both sides of the river, with the 
unyeiled mysteries of the temple worship spreading 
away to the "Libyan suburb/' and the Colossi 
sitting alone in the meadow awaiting the dawn, 
we forgot all else and buried ourselves in a wilder- 
ness of letters and papers, forgetful of everything 
but home. 

The morning brought us to a realizing sense 
of our condition. Very early we were rowed 
over the river by our men, and there found a 
small regiment of donkeys awaiting our arrival. 
There was the usual excitement among the don- 
key boys. Each little fellow was determined to 
secure an engagement for the day, and in his 
eagerness to get ahead of his rivals he backed his 
diminutive beast right under us in some cases, 
and we found to our amazement that we were 
mounted in spite of ourselves. We set forth in 
a body, but, as the beasts varied materially in 



174 MASHALLAH ! 

strength, agility, and good spirits, we were soon 
scattered along a strip of desert in which our poor 
little burden-bearers sank up to their knees. Then 
we were ferried, donkeys and all, over a canal, 
and remounted on the opposite shore, where we 
at once struck off into the green meadows that 
stretch to the base of the hills, and are submerged 
during the Nile overflow. 

In the midst of this meadow stand the Co- 
lossi. I might have seen them a thousand times 
before, they were so familiar. Their stately forms 
stood out against the Libyan hills, dark shad- 
ows thrown across a background as bare as glass, 
and of a baked-brick color. I believe we all 
rode around these giant idols, said several amus- 
ing things, and having waited while a small Nu- 
bian climbed into the lap of the " vocal Mem- 
non," and tapped the rock with his hammer to 
show us how the ancients were cheated by a whee- 
dling priesthood (see Murray and the majority of 
his disciples), we galloped away to wander from 
one temple to another, and from tomb to tomb till 
sunset. It would be an impertinence in me to at- 
tempt a description of these temples and tombs. I 
note only the impression they made on me. What 
more can any one hope to do at this late day ? 
Of the vast number of volumes treating of Egypt, 
very many of which I have been fortunate enough 
to have access to, there is one writer who has 
afforded me more pleasure than all the others. I 



THEBES. 175 

find her volumes the most interesting, the most 
accurate, the most profitable books on Egypt and 
Syria that a tourist can procure, and these are 
the works of the late Harriet Martineau, whom the 
u Howadji," with his pen dipped in honey and 
his mouth full of dates, is pleased to call "the 
poet Harriet. " 

It would be difficult to sustain one's enthu- 
siasm at the exclamatory pitch long enough to 
exhaust the wonders of Thebes. The eyes grow 
weary, the mind becomes confused long before 
the first day is ended ; yet day after day we 
return to the siege, and always with the same 
question on our lips : ' If Thebes in ruins can 
amaze us beyond expression, what must she have 
been in the climax of her glory ? Where the col- 
umns are still standing, sculptured from base to 
capital, stained with delicate but indelible tints, 
and roofed over with stone painted like the blue 
heaven, "fretted with golden stars/' we realize 
that this temple needs only to be thronged with 
worshipers in suitable costume to reproduce in a 
great degree the ancient life of the East. The 
ludicrous spectacle of a party of modern tourists 
in cork helmets, puggeries, white cotton umbrel- 
las, and green goggles strutting among the ruins 
of an Egyptian temple is perhaps without a paral- 
lel in the annals of our time. It would enrage 
me to have this vision continually before my eyes 
were I not conscious that I am, myself, quite as 



176 MASHALLAH ! 

out of place as the rest of my fellows, and this 
conviction utterly humiliates me and fills me with 
a settled melancholy. It occurs to me sometimes 
that we must be a spectacle calculated to draw 
tears to the eyes of the gods who were once rev- 
erenced on these shores. We crawl about the tem- 
ple walls and chip off our specimens, giving in 
exchange for these keepsakes a vast amount of 
sentiment, mingled with pity for the bull-wor- 
shipers who created them. Possibly, the ancients, 
whose imaginations conceived, whose incompre- 
hensible art achieved these marvelous monuments, 
might have more compassion on us were they to 
visit our recent attempts at architectural display, 
but they would certainly be excusable if they were 
to ignore us entirely. At the Memnonium there 
is a prostrate statue of a king weighing nearly 
nine hundred tons. On such a scale of grandeur 
as this did the Egyptians build ; and the havoc 
that has been dealt among the temples can only 
be attributed to a violent convulsion of nature. 
Columns have fallen without a noticeable scar 
save such as would have been inevitable in the 
fall of so ponderous a body. Other columns 
have toppled over and been caught and held in a 
slanting position. Great blocks of stone have 
fallen from the roof, others are partly displaced, 
but there are no evidences of mutilation save such 
as are to be found wherever tourists are allowed 
their full liberty. 



THEBES. 177 

Among the ruins of " hundred-gated Thebes" 
the Arabs have built like wasps. Their mud 
houses are on the very roofs of the temples — 
houses that are now deserted, for after a few gen- 
erations these fragile tenements begin to crumble, 
and are left empty, like last year's nests. The 
mud Tillages are a strange contrast to the majes- 
tic ruins and the splendid art depicted on their 
walls. Over the figure of Rameses I, you read this 
inscription : " The good God ; Lord of the world ; 
son of the sun ; Lord of the powerful, Rameses, 
deceased, esteemed by the great God, Lord of 
Abydos " — and the Lord of Abydos was the 
mighty Osiris ! Beggars follow us among the 
ruins persistently ; blind and decrepit old men who 
are led by long poles held in the hands of boys ; 
deformed people, girls with jars of water, dog 
your steps ; tiresome venders of antiquities spread 
out their wares at your feet and cry to you inces- 
santly. Even the flight up the wild and desolate 
gorge to the tombs of the kings in the Libyan 
hills was only a brief escape from the importuni- 
ties of these begging tribes. We thought we had 
escaped, for we found we were not followed ; but, 
when we arrived at the galleries of the tombs, the 
whole community of beggars, water-carriers, and 
peddlers of antiquities solemnly rose in a body to 
receive us. They had climbed over the hill in 
the intense heat and gained on us by a full half 
hour. 

12 



178 MASHALLAH! 

The tombs, for the most part, are shafts sunk 
three or four hundred feet into the heart of the 
hill, with an easy decline to the very bottom. 
The smooth walls are plastered and elaborately 
frescoed. A multitude of small chambers open 
out on each side of the long hall in the larger 
tombs, and there are in some cases lofty chambers 
with domed ceilings, and other chambers below 
these buried deep in the bowels of the hill. When 
these tombs were opened, after an undisturbed re- 
pose of many centuries, they were stored with 
mummies. These have all disappeared. You 
will find them in the museums scattered all over 
the face of the globe. Thousands of them were 
destroyed for the wood which inclosed them, for 
the linen windings, which were worked over into 
cheap paper, and for the trinkets, the rings, neck- 
laces, jewels, and amulets, which were seized by 
the Arabs and are now daily offered for sale. The 
supply is almost inexhaustible, for all these hills 
are honeycombed with mummy pits, and a tithe 
of them haye not yet been opened. I found 
heaps of broken skeletons, arms, legs, and hands, 
wrapped in fragments of coarse yellow linen, lying 
about the mouths of the tombs. They were con- 
sidered too imperfect to offer for sale, and had I 
chosen I could have brought away some bushels 
of fragments. 

Apes, cats, and ibises have been honored with 
interment in these same hills, among the kings and 



THEBES. 179 

the queens and the princely citizens of Thebes, but 
their mummified remains are not often brought 
to light. I have found a prayer said by the priests 
oyer the entrails of a body about to be mummi- 
fied. The entrails, having had the burden of all 
the sins of the flesh cast upon them, were com- 
mitted to the Nile, and the body, spiced and per- 
fumed and incased in sycamore, was laid away 
in its "eternal habitation," an eternity of some 
three thousand years that has come to its conclu- 
sion before the invasion of the traveling world. 
The priest, having borne the entrails of the de- 
ceased to the banks of the Nile, delivered over 
them this prayer of the soul : 

" Oh, thou sun, our sovereign lord! and all ye deities 
who have given life to man ! receive me and grant me an 
abode with the eternal gods ! During the whole course 
of my life I have scrupulously worshiped the gods my 
father taught me to adore; I have ever honored my 
parents, who begat this body; I have killed no one; I 
have not defrauded any one, nor have I done any injury 
to any man : and if I have committed any other faults 
during my life, either in eating or drinking, it has not 
been for myself, hut for these things." 

From a high cliff that overhangs the plains of 
Thebes I looked down upon the spring meadows 
and saw the shadow of the temples sweeping east- 
ward toward the Nile. We were surrounded by 
a girdle of glorious hills, softened with the sub- 
dued light of the declining sun. The beauty of 



180 MASHALLAH ! 

the scene was beyond description, and I strove to 
conjure up the shades of the great past, but out 
of the silence came no responsive echo, and within 
the sacred chambers of the temples the spell was 
broken and all the gods were dumb. I lay in the 
deep grass at sunset under the feet of the Colossi. 
A well has been sunk between the thrones of these 
solemn watchers. A naked Nubian toiled at the 
shadoof, disappearing from sight as he stooped to 
fill his goatskin bucket, and turning his curious 
eyes toward me as he rose erect and swung the 
dripping burden over his shoulder into a small 
canal, the thirsty throat of the meadow. There 
I dreamed of the dromos with its double row of 
sphinxes, down which the Colossi stared night 
and day ; and of the great temple that stood be- 
hind them, no fragment of which remains, and 
over the site of which the corn waves and the 
crickets sing, and I waited for the voice that has 
hailed the morning with audible utterance — but, 
no ! The wind hissed in the grass ; the flies 
buzzed about me ; the sun sank into the des- 
ert, and the twilight paled before the rising 
moon, and in the mellow dusk I returned to the 
shore thinking that "Nilus heareth strange 
voices/' and may hear stranger voices yet in the 
hereafter ; but for evermore " Memnon resound- 
eth not to the sun." 

There was an evening in Luxor when the 
home news had been worn out, and we returned 



THEBES. 181 

again with quiet hearts to the pastoral delights 
of the Nile life. I remember that we strolled 
along the river shore, and fell apart in pairs, 
and came upon one another again among the 
ruins of the temple of Luxor. I fear there was 
something like flirtation under the blind eyes of 
those great idols. But gods of stone are discreet 
witnesses ; and who would not have yielded to 
the mellowing influences of such a moon, and 
such a temple, and such an opportunity ? Be- 
cause we are on the Nile, must we be prudish ? 
Later, we took a swarm of donkeys, the small- 
est visible donkeys, and galloped off to Karnak. 
Our saddles turned and launched us into the 
sand ; when the saddles were secure, the little 
beasts turned themselves and went down on their 
knees, and left us to proceed on foot or in the 
air at an accelerated pace. We were silent as we 
came upon the temple. There was a spell over 
it. It seemed unreal, that avenue of sphinxes 
that stared at us as we approached the lofty pro- 
pylon ; the sand deadened the sound of hoofs ; 
even the boy drivers, who are not slow to abuse 
their animals, clucked softly to the beasts, and 
we dismounted at the entrance to the pillared 
court. 

The great hall of Karnak, than which there is 
nothing grander in the world, has been reduced 
to figures so often that it seems absurd to repro- 
duce them here. It measures one hundred and 



182 MASHALLAH ! 

seventy-five feet by three hundred and twenty- 
nine. The twelve columns of the central avenue 
are each eleven feet six inches in diameter and 
sixty-two feet high, without plinth or abacus. 
On each side of the avenue of large columns are 
seven lines of columns forty-two feet five inches 
in height and twenty-eight feet in circumference 
— a congregation of one hundred and thirty-four 
columns in a single group. The hall is roofless. 
It is a forest of gigantic pillars so crowded to- 
gether that the slanting moonbeams fall only half 
way down their length, and we groped about their 
bases in thick shadow. Here and there bars of 
light streamed through an opening in the walls 
and stole softly along the solemn aisles, touching 
the hieroglyphics with absolute color and luring 
the bats from their slimy nests in the debris that 
buries half the temple. It was like a dream that 
night, the measureless majesty of these columns ; 
there might easily have been a thousand of them. 
I could readily have believed it, and their incal- 
culable height — surely in a dream only is such a 
temple builded ! Vistas opened on every hand as 
we wandered over the vast ruin — moonlit avenues 
with slender obelisks at the farther end, silver- 
tipped and of exquisitely graceful proportions. 
All the wear and tear of time and the iconoclasts 
can not mutilate a dream temple. Daylight alone 
and the glare of the Egyptian sun are able to de- 
stroy the splendor of Karnak — the Karnak that 



FLESHPOTS. 183 

by moonlight is veiled in an awful beauty that is 
not of this age nor of the last, but of the time 
when the immortal gods dwelt here and filled this 
sanctuary with imperishable beauty. 



XVIII. 

FLESHPOTS. 



Dahabeah Nitetis, on the Nile. 
There is no feast in Egypt, no birth-fete, no 
christening, no circumcision, no marriage, no re- 
ligious festival of any importance, no fair, not 
even a pilgrimage to Mecca, but the fleshpot is in 
the midst thereof, and usually it is the chief fea- 
ture of the occasion. It is the al'meh, the gha- 
zeeyeh, the khawal, or the gink that brings fire 
to the eye, blood to the cheek, and joy to the 
heart of the Moslem — unless he be exceptionally 
devout. These are the allurements in the Kake's 
Progress. They are what the traveler hears most 
of, sees least of. Virtuous Cairo has banished 
them from her streets and cafes, and now one 
must seek them in the privacy of the harem or in 
the secret chambers of the pleasure-house, whose 
doors are doubly barred. Under the palm groves 
of the Nile the aFmeh sits and sings her siren 
song ; we have heard it floating on the wind in 



184 MASHALLAH ! 

the mellow twilight, coupled with the tinkling 
lute, and wondered not that there were rebellious 
mutterings in the forecastle and symptoms of mu- 
tiny, inasmuch as the music-laden wind was pro- 
yokingly fair and bore us steadily onward out of 
the charm of the aFmeh's voice. 

In every town on the Nile there is a corner 
set apart for the ghawazee tribe. They claim 
kinship with Baramikel, favored by Haroun al 
Kaschid, and they are the bewitching stars of 
these Arabian nights. How they twinkle ! pale, 
moon-eyed women of ample flesh and the reck- 
less grace of drowsy pards. Dove-eyed and dim- 
pled, with supple joints that yield to every at- 
titude, the ghazeeyeh is trained from her cradle 
in all the arts of seduction. She has nothing to 
lose, for she is one of the tribes already lost. 
If she marries, her husband is her slave ; he 
thrums on the ood or plays on the one-stringed 
rahab, and sees his beloved making enormous 
eyes at the young bloods who ogle her impu- 
dently. If they be dwellers in tents, as they 
frequently are, going from town to town, he at- 
tends to camp duties and leaves his bride to sun 
herself in the liberal patronage of the town ; at 
the cafes that shine out from the Nile's banks like 
beacons — they are in reality the river lighthouses 
that guide the belated voyager to shore, where he is 
sure to tie up within hearing of the monotonous 
night-long fantasia at the cafes — the ghawazee 



FLESHPOTS. 185 

hover in flocks. They quaff delightful draughts 
of sherbet, and something more potent ; they fill 
themselves with the pungent fumes of hasheesh, 
when the narghileh reaches their lips as it passes 
from mouth to mouth. There is always a cup of 
coffee and a chorus for the entertainment of the 
wayfarer, and nothing is more difficult in the 
whole navigation of the Nile than weathering a 
coffee-house when the barbaric music of the fan- 
tasia throbs over the waters and the voice of the 
al'meh is heard in the land. Again and again 
during this Nile log have the pages been left blank, 
because somehow we had drifted to shore and 
stranded directly under the eaves of a coffee- 
house. The crew at such times are wont to fly 
in a body ; we follow close upon their heels and 
expostulate, but mere words are as the buzz of 
summer flies to them ; they smile blandly, point 
to the languishing ghawazee, and with the artless 
charm of children implore "backsheesh." They 
take their sip of coffee at our expense, and cele- 
brate us in song ; a chorus is raisable at the short- 
est possible notice, and a chorus is not easily cut 
off in the middle. By and by we return to the 
Nitetis, where the ladies sit and wonder at our 
delay. We are off again in mid-stream, with the 
great sail filled, and then, and not till then, is it 
discovered that one of the crew is missing. We 
draw up to the bank and call him by name. Our 
shouts rings high above the confusion at the coffee- 



186 MASHALLAH ! 

house and the barking of the thousand village 
dogs. It is some time before we get an answer, 
for there are few echoes on the Nile, so few, in- 
deed that, when we passed Gebel Sheykh Hereede 
the other day, we all sat on deck and roared our- 
selves hoarse because we discovered there was a 
little echo hidden away in the hollow of the rock. 
The deserter is secured after a time, rescued from 
the snares of the sirens. 

I remember the close of that memorable day 
when we drew up under Luxor, flushed with sun- 
set. Thebes lay on the one hand and Karnak 
on the other, imperishable monuments of a great 
and glorious past. Scarcely had the stakes been 
driven that held us to that historical and roman- 
tic shore, when a handsome boy hastened toward 
us out of the shadow of one of the temples. He 
bore under his arm a rude darabuhkeh, a deep 
earthen jar with the mouth covered with fish- 
skin. Beating this primitive drum with his wrist, 
and tapping a light tattoo with his fingers, he 
skipped nimbly to and fro along the bank, sing- 
ing his song of love. He had the limber spine 
of a cat, this agile gaish, and all his muscles quiv- 
ered responsive to the rhythm of a ballad so 
iniquitous that a full translation of it were im- 
possible in a language suited to the requirements of 
a less passionate people like our own. One even- 
ing, as we were drawing out from land, hop- 
ing to drift a few miles up stream before the 



FLESHPOTS. 187 

wind died, we saw a slender little creature work- 
ing her way to the water's edge, through the 
crowd of natives that had come down from the 
town to see us. She had a haggard face, very 
old and worldly-wise for a child of ten years. 
There was an unnatural light in the sharp black 
eye — to this hour I am not satisfied that she was 
not insane — and all her movements betrayed a 
highly wrought nervous organization, such as is 
not very often met with in this luxurious climate. 
We had drawn up stakes, and were just swinging 
off into the current, when this impish child, clad 
in a scanty robe of striped blue cloth worn com- 
monly among the fellaheen (the peasantry), caught 
up her skirts, and drawing one foot up under 
her as she stood upon the very edge of the water, 
she stamped violently and repeatedly upon the 
ground, snapping the fingers of one hand with 
great energy, and all the while chanting a bar- 
baric chant. She looked the picture of a little 
fury ; her eyes flashed, her brows were compressed, 
and her breath, as she drew it in, came thick and 
hard ; the spectacle was positively alarming, for 
the child grew more violent, shrieking at the top 
of her shrill voice, and stamping with an appear- 
ance of the greatest rage, as she saw our barge 
receding from the shore, while her efforts were 
still unrewarded. We threw her a few coppers, 
which were scrambled for by the crowd, and in 
the midst of the tumult the dancer disappeared. 



188 MASH ALL AH! 

This was a young ghazeeyeh, who was not yet sure 
of her charms. 

The consular agents at Luxor are Arabs who 
have learned from long experience that the travel- 
ing Christian, though he may leave a spotless rec- 
ord at home for the inspection of his neighbors 
and the world in general, when he gets as far 
away as Egypt from the prying eyes and busy 
tongues, is by no means averse to ascertaining the 
nature of these fleshpots. Let us accept the agent's 
generous hospitality, which, by the way, we do 
at the expense of a return dozen of champagne 
and a couple of flagons of maraschino. The house 
■ — a clumsy Arabian structure, with thick mud 
walls — is built in the very porches of a temple. 
Three superb columns stand before the veranda 
of the Consulate, and tower high above the flat 
roof, where they support a single block of stone 
of immense size, still richly ornamented with 
hieroglyphics cut deep into the stone. A broad 
hall runs through the center of the house. Divans 
on each side of the hall suggest to us the necessity 
of sitting Turkish fashion or reclining at full 
length if we would appreciate the utility of this 
Eastern luxury. The hall is crowded ; there 
are half a dozen dahabeahs in port, and " Cook's " 
little steamer makes a breathless halt here, in 
order that his boarding-school may be whisked 
through the temples and the tombs, and be 
back in season to rush on to the next station, 



FLESHPOTS. 189 

without letting the boiler cool. We sit in sol- 
emn rows on each side of the hall, and are appar- 
ently waiting for some one to lead us in prayer. 
Galaxies of candles flare upon the walls and send 
off their threads of smoke, that follow the air 
currents round and round the room. Coffee is 
served us in porcelain thimbles that are too hot 
to hold, and so we drop them into small vases of 
silver-gilt wicker-work, and drain the dregs of the 
muddy draught. We gradually lose consciousness 
of the absurdity of our situation, and begin to 
look about us as if we had some business here. 
We are, in fact, a promiscuous party of ladies 
and gentlemen, who have gathered together to 
witness a spectacle which is considered too inde- 
cent for the virtuous eyes of the Cairenes ! At 
the top of the hall there are five women, squatted 
on the floor in a row ; behind them are seated 
a half dozen musicians, twanging and thumping 
the national instruments of the country. They 
play skillfully and with marvelously accurate and 
amazingly intricate rhythm. The gradations of 
Arabian harmonies can not be produced on any 
intruments we use save those that are stringed 
and without frets. Your Arab minstrel splits a 
half note in two, and can then distinctly flat or 
sharp as the case requires. Wagner has still 
something to learn in the way of intoxicating dis- 
cord, but he must study the music of the Egyp- 
tian past, if he would better himself. The 



190 MASHALLAH I 

ghawazee, clad in light garments, that cling to 
them, sprawl easily and sport with one another 
until the guests are assembled. Then they rise, 
pass up and down the room, offering a hand to 
each visitor, which is in no case refused. These 
are the light women of Egypt ; there are none 
lighter on the face of the globe. The feminine 
guests look curiously at the dancers, and examine 
their toilets as if they were so many big dolls. 
The long black hair falls over their shoulders in 
a vast number of small braids strung with gold 
coins. About their foreheads a wreath of coins 
dangles its pendants to the high-arched and heav- 
ily painted eyebrows. Great hoops are in the 
ears, ropes of coins about the neck and arms, 
and at the waist there is a loose girdle, a chain 
of jingling bells, and amulets that hang negli- 
gently over the swelling hips. The dress, parted 
low over the bosom and gathered close under the 
breast, is excessively ugly. French gaiters in- 
case the dainty feet, and the slender fingers clasp 
miniature cymbals that clash musically and mark 
the rapid motions of the dancer. The al'mehs 
sing a prelude, followed by the first dance of two 
of the ghawazee. They stand with their feet apart 
and their arms extended. The castanets ring 
like silver bells; all the coins on the foreheads 
and the necks and arms of the dancers jingle ; 
their bodies quiver and undulate ; they swing from 
one foot to the other, sway to and fro, wave their 



PHILJ3. 191 

arms in exquisitely graceful gestures ; the music 
is incessant, the dance unflagging ; if there is any 
motion of the feet at all, it is merely an awkward 
shuffle over the floor from one end of the hall to 
the other ; finally they whirl about, tossing their 
heels in the air, and the first figure is at an end. 
Brandy is brought them, and they resume their 
exercises. The second figure is like the first, only 
more so, and the evening wanes. The guests 
withdraw, most of them very much bored, some 
of them considerably shocked. 



XIX. 

PHIL^E , 



Dahabeah Nitetis, on the Nile. 
Early in the morning, we drew up under the 
high shore of Assooan and came to a dead halt. 
In the center of the Nile lay the long, narrow 
island of Elephantine, looking pretty enough 
with its palm grove to the north, but sterile and 
forbidding in the south. There were great rocks 
all about us, cliffs above us that rush together at 
the cataracts, and sunken rocks in the river for 
some miles below the town. These rocks brought 
us to a standstill the night before we reached 
Assooan, though the wind was fresh and fair. 
Two of the little Nile steamers that dart up and 



192 MASHALLAH! 

down stream like dragon - flies have struck and 
foundered in these treacherous waters. Here we 
turn our prow to the northward, for it is too late 
in the season to ascend the cataract. No sooner 
had we made fast to the shore at Assooan than 
the crew gave three lusty cheers, and the digni- 
fied old rais fell upon the neck of Michel, our 
handsome and worthy dragoman ; the two em- 
braced and kissed each other heartily, in mutual 
congratulation upon reaching the cataract in 
safety. There was a general jubilee — everybody 
was shaking hands with somebody else, from the 
first captain to the cook from Bagdad and the 
cabin-boy from Beyrut. 

Here the great spar, one hundred and sev- 
enty-five feet in length, was to come down, be 
taken to pieces, and lashed from mast to mast 
like a ridge - pole for our awning ; divided in 
three parts, the longer portion overlapped our 
barge at stem and stern, and, in place of this 
sky-scraper, we were reduced to a poor little sail, 
the very sight of which filled us with humilia- 
tion and distrust. All the winds, or, at any 
rate, the most of them, blow up stream. As we 
are about to return, it behooves us to make the 
most of the strong current, and to go away with 
as much canvas as possible. House-cleaning, as 
it were, turning everything out into the sun and 
remodeling our floating home to a great extent, 
we left everybody in confusion, and gave our- 



PHIL.E. 193 

selves up to the fullest enjoyment of our few days 
on the edge of Nubia. There was a high bank 
above our dahabeah, thick palm groves crowded 
to the edge of it, and looked over upon us as we 
took breakfast on deck that first morning at As- 
sooan. Black barbarians sat on the shore in a 
row, offering their treasures — ostrich eggs, bows, 
arrows and spears, baskets of henna, and rude 
jewels of beaten silver ; but it was so tedious 
bargaining with men and women who could not 
speak or understand Arabic that our purchases 
were indefinitely postponed. Meanwhile the 
offers for all wares were slowly advanced from 
English into Arabic through our dragoman ; 
from Arabic into Nubian through one of the Nu- 
bian sailors, and back again to us in the course 
of time through three languages. 

Assooan is marvelously interesting; nowhere 
else have we found such strange people, such at- 
tractive bazaars, or so picturesque and barbaric 
a life. All the riches of Central Africa drift by 
desert and river to the cataract, and are strewn 
upon the sandy shore at Assooan, awaiting boats to 
convey them to the markets of Cairo and the world. 
Coming out of the bazaar in the afternoon of that 
eventful day of our arrival, it seemed as if nothing 
could touch us further in the shape of bronzed 
skins, nose-rings, and stiff curls gummed and glist- 
ening with castor-oil ; but, at sunset, as we stood 
on one of the heights that overhang the Nile about 
13 



194 MASHALLAH ! 

the cataract, we looked down upon a broad beach 
along which twenty barges were stranded, and 
over which bales of costly merchandise were 
strewn as carelessly as if they were so much raw 
cotton. There were tons of ostrich feathers, 
packed solid, covered with coarse sacking, and 
tied with ropes ; cords of ivory tusks, bushels of 
clumsy bracelets, girdles, and hoops for the ears 
and nose, made of dull, white, beaten silver ; bun- 
dles of ebony, and an indescribable collection of 
curios, all heaped together in splendid confusion 
on the sand. Eows of complaining camels were 
kneeling close at hand, a caravan from the Soudan. 
Watchmen were squatted about in groups, enter- 
taining themselves with coffee or singing to the 
accompaniment of lutes of the very rudest descrip- 
tion. In the evening small fires were kindled up 
and down the beach ; dark men were seen grouped 
about them, cooking, laughing, chatting, smok- 
ing ; and all night long there were the tinkle of 
stringed instruments, the husky and mournful 
whistle of reed pipes, the clash of cymbals, the 
chorus of wild songs, the clapping of hands, and 
the animated contortions of the dancers, who skip 
like fauns and satyrs, and are akin to them in 
some respects. 

It is thus the watchers are kept awake when 
the shore is strewn with the priceless wreck of 
a newly arrived caravan ; but who would or 
could sleep on such nights as these and in such 



PHIL.E. 195 

barbaric Edens ? Philae, the sacred, the enchant- 
ed island, lies six miles above Assooan. As the 
river is too low at this season for our dahabeah to 
be pulled up the rapids, we all seize upon stirrup- 
less donkeys and set forth by land. The desert 
sweeps to the very edge of the village, and there 
the withering heat and the blinding glare begin 
to tell upon us. We thread the narrow trail that 
winds through the center of a Mohammedan cem- 
etery that is picked to the bone, and lies bleach- 
ing in the sun like a skeleton. All Mohammedan 
cemeteries, or rather all Egyptian cemeteries, are 
pictures of absolute desolation. The domed 
tombs are neglected ; the slender headstones are 
thrown half over, or lie buried in the sand ; not 
a living thing is visible save the lizards that sprawl 
everywhere, and here and there a gray-green this- 
tle nodding in the wind. Beyond the cemetery 
our path lay between great black rocks that rose 
out of the sand on each side of us and made a 
long narrow valley of death, through which we 
traveled painfully. Camel trains passed us at 
frequent intervals — this is one of the highways of 
Africa — with black turbaned drivers swinging on 
their humps. Very often we saw inscriptions cut 
in the rocks, the names of travelers who passed 
this way two or three thousand years ago. These 
majestic tablets of granite, syenite, and porphyry 
seem likely to preserve their fragmentary histories 
to the end of time. Indeed, Egypt is the begin- 



196 MASHALLAH ! 

ning and the end ; what shall be compared with 
her? 

We sought shelter in an oasis where the imp- 
ish Nubian children pestered us like flies, and 
the women tore from their necks, noses, ears, 
and arms such poor ornaments as they delight 
in, and offered them for sale. In some cases 
these beads and their coins were almost the only 
covering of the half-tamed girls. The dress of 
the Nubian maiden is a fringe of buffalo hide, 
ornamented with large beads and cowries, and 
worn about the waist. Mahatta, a sayage village 
just above the cataract, was our port. There we 
bargained for a boat and crew to bear us over to 
the islands that are scattered in the Nile, chief of 
which is the queenly, the unrivaled Philae. Never 
was more ado about so small a matter. We en- 
tered an open boat and sat in the high stern while 
our dragoman bargained for a crew. But for him 
we must have been swamped immediately, for a 
score of naked savages leaped into the clumsy craft 
and took us by storm. The faithful and long-suf- 
fering Michel laid about him right and left with 
his " korbag," a snake-like whip of hippopotamus 
hide, and the agile pirates left us in a body, many 
of them plunging into the river to escape the 
fangs of that lithe snake. Then we beguiled a 
half dozen of the able-bodied boys on board and 
set sail, a very shabby and unpromising sail ; but 
before we had swung off into the current the 



PHIK<E. 197 

natives were swarming over our low gunwale 
again, enraged at losing their share of the back- 
sheesh, and Michel was once more forced to lash 
the fellows over their shoulders before we got 
safely out of their reach. We landed among* the 
rocks in mid-river, and climbed to a pinnacle 
where the best view of the cataract is obtained. 

This cataract is no cataract, though tradition 
says it has been such, and with a roar of waters that 
deafened the ears of those who lived near it. It 
is now a rapid, up which, through a side-channel, 
the dahabeahs are towed by a hundred or two of 
natives, who swim from rock to rock with the 
rope between their teeth, and, having gained foot- 
ing, haul the barge after them length by length, 
taking a turn in the rope and a fresh swim be- 
tween times. There is one deep channel in the 
rapids down which the water rushes like a mill- 
race, and through this channel the returning 
barges shoot like arrows. The passage is very 
dangerous and awfully exciting, but it is made 
hundreds of times every year, and in most cases 
the passengers remain on deck, having first se- 
cured their loose luggage below, in case the barge 
plunges violently, as it sometimes does. Not- 
withstanding the peril of this part of the Nile 
voyage, very few accidents are recorded. While 
we clung to the rocks overhanging the " shoot," 
dozens of robust Nubians, men and boys, entered 
the river at the top of the " shoot" and made the 



198 MASHALLAH ! 

descent on logs — the Nubian ferry — in one minute 
and a half, and beyond that they would have had 
clear sailing to the very sea, had they continued ; 
but they came out of the water at the bottom of 
the " shoot/' shouldered their logs, and scrambled 
back to 'us over the huge rock to beg as long as 
we were within earshot. Turning up the stream at 
sunset, our sail sifting the wind through its numer- 
ous rents, and our barge thumping about among 
the rocks in a ridiculous fashion, those small Nu- 
bians danced along the shore and made the ada- 
mantine hills resound again with their ceaseless 
cry of " Backsheesh ! " 

We were entering the iron gates of Nubia, a 
land of mystery. The cartouches of famous 
kings are graven on the tables of stone, so that 
the very hills have become the monuments of 
those royal guests who paused at the threshold 
of Nubia and left their cards. Working our 
way up this black valley, with the water surg- 
ing beneath us, and the wind puffing fitfully 
from the rocky caverns that yawned about us, 
we swung under the shadow of a great rock 
into a stillness as of death itself, took in our sail, 
plunged the great oars into the tide, and like a 
swan swam out into a watery vale sheltered by 
jealous hills, black like the Nubians they nourish. 
In the center, right before our very eyes, lay a 
fairy island, green as an emerald, palm-fringed, 
mystical, and with a temple in its midst, whose 



miLM. 199 

lofty pillar, graven with the likenesses of majestic 
gods, whose colossal columns and superb arcades 
were at that moment transfigured in a baptism of 
fire, and so the sun of Nubia set on Philae, the 
sacred isle. A few strokes of the long, sweeping 
oars brought us to shore ; a broad flight of mar- 
ble stairs descended from the platform of the 
temple to the water's edge ; rank weeds and 
grasses fell over them, and the marble was broken 
in many places. We moored our bark at the foot 
of these stairs, and immediately dispersed over 
the island in the wildest delight. It is a little 
island, with steep shores on every side. The 
temples are comparatively modern, being only a 
little more than two thousand years old. Part of 
the great temple has been defaced in a vain at- 
tempt to erase the sculptures on the wall, for it 
was at one time used as a place of Christian wor- 
ship ; but the temple stands with its indelible 
records of the first faith we have knowledge of, 
while the religion of the Eedeemer has passed out 
of Egypt like a garment that is changed. 

Philge is a huge mausoleum ; you may review 
it all in an hour or two if you hasten from court 
to court, from terrace to terrace ; but every inch 
of its sacred soil tells of final death. The tombs 
about the temples have all been at one time hu- 
man habitations, and these have again become 
sepulchres, net merely of a race highly poetic 
and profoundly skilled, but they are the tombs 



200 MASHALLAH ! 

of the last of that race and of a religion the 
mother of our own. As that race perished from 
the earth, a spirit of love was infused into the 
old faith, that through it the new race might 
be saved. You see this in every rock page of 
these graven temples. Osiris, the redeemer who 
died, yet triumphed over death, a sacrifice for 
the people who worshiped ; Osiris, whose tomb 
has made this island for ever sacred, whose holi- 
ness was such that his very name was name- 
less in the days when the most terrible of oaths 
was "by him who sleeps in Philae " ! What were 
these many gods, in the old time, but the deifi- 
cation of the attributes of the Supreme God ? 
All goodness was embodied in Osiris, who left his 
abode in the presence of the Supreme ; took 
human form, yet became not human ; went about 
doing good to men ; sank into death in a conflict 
with the powers of evil ; rose again from the dead, 
to spread blessings over the land of Egypt and 
all the world ; and was appointed Judge of the 
Dead and Lord of Heaven while yet present with 
his worshipers on earth. Here it is, cut in the 
living rock, imperishable and indisputable. In 
their ritual of the dead you read their plea for 
salvation in the works of mercy thus set forth : 
"I have won for myself God by my love ; I have 
given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, 
clothes to the naked ; I have afforded refuge to 
the forsaken." Life was so rounded four thou- 



PHIL^E. 201 

sand and more years ago ; and three centuries 
and a half after the Christian era, Isis and Osiris 
were worshiped in the temples of Philae. 

As I leaned from the lofty pylon at sunset, 
my eyes fell upon a pavilion that stands above 
the terrace overhanging the river on the east side 
of the island. At that moment its pillars were 
embossed with gold, the ripples sang beneath its 
threshold, the very palms that gathered about 
it seemed to do it reverence and to wave their 
boughs perpetually to and fro in a twilight ex- 
quisite beyond expression. The low walls be- 
tween the columns were like embroidered screens 
that but half hid the mystery within them ; the 
whole glowed like living embers, which a breath 
might have blackened and an hour reduced to a 
bed of dead white ashes. I remembered an East- 
ern picture — the only one that has haunted me 
all my life — a pavilion in a palm grove by an en- 
chanted shore. I had looked for this picture 
from day to day with faint hope, for I knew not 
where in the ancient and almost forgotten world 
it lay. My heart leaped into my throat when my 
eyes first fell on that sunset Temple of Philaa. 
It was the picture I had been .looking for, and, 
when the full moon rose above the hills and 
flooded the river valley with mellow light, the 
palm boughs, touched with silver, waved all 
about us, and through the roofless chamber of the 
pale temple shone the immense blue Nubian stars. 



202 MASHALLAH ! 

Later there were the plash of oars and ringing 
laughter, and the bark drifted off into the night. 
Two of us remained to watch for the dawn — a 
friend and I, in company with Yussef s trusty rifle. 
On the yery top of that great temple, under the 
open sky, with the gods staring at us from the 
low parapet, we passed the night. Once I dreamed, 
but it was a dream of falling or being cast 
down from some awful height, and I sprang up 
with a cry of horror. The temple swarmed with 
shades ; were we not profaning the Holy of Holies ? 
Then we talked, and relapsed into silent, listen- 
ing moods, when we heard the voice of the Nu- 
bian nightingale, whose melancholy notes seemed 
afraid of the dark, far off in the hills about us. 
One or two other birds darted over us, uttering 
short, piercing cries as they discovered that the 
temple was profaned by our presence. All night 
long, with scarcely a moment's interruption, we 
heard the creaking of the sakia ; one grows so fa- 
miliar with the drone of the water-wheels that the 
self -same picture is perpetually before the mind's 
eye. A rustic shelter of palm boughs, under 
which a buffalo, with his eyes clumsily bandaged, 
travels round and round, turning the rude wheel 
that overhangs the river ; a man or a woman, or, 
perhaps, oftener a child, sits on the tongue behind 
the buffalo, and sleeps to the droning of the 
wheel ; perhaps the beast sleeps also, charmed by 
that drowsy song, and then the song suddenly 



PHIL.E. 203 

ceases, and the small driver starts from his dream 
to lash the beast into a walk again. The music 
begins like one long, lazy yawn, the chain of 
water-jugs run slowly over the wheel, drop down 
to the river, dip, fill, and rise again, clinging to 
the pegs on the other side of the wheel ; at the 
top of their journey they catch on a trough, tip, 
gush out their waters, and go down once more and 
round and round all day, all night, and every day 
and night, so long as the river is below the lips 
of the thirsty and unsociable fields. Visions of 
homely gardens and groves of high holyhocks 
and beehive villages in midsummer heat, and of 
the everlasting flight of the buzzing black vil- 
lagers, haunt me whenever I hear the monotonous 
complaint of the sakias ; and, when I am beyond 
the reach of their unceasing drawl, I know that a 
squeaking farm-yard gate, or an ungreased axle, 
or some unused door swinging on its rusty hinges 
in the wind, will call to mind the long, low Nile 
banks and the water-wheels, and my heart will 
leap to the music as the heart of the Egyptian is 
quickened and refreshed when he toils at the 
ponderous oars, singing, "Pull well, pull long 
and well ! and the sooner we shall come to shore 
and sit in the shade by the sakia ! " After sun- 
rise on the morning following that eventful night 
in Philse, we left the island before the heat of the 
day and made our first retreat toward Cairo. It 
would have been a bitter experience for me, the 



204 MASHALLAH ! 

return voyage, did I not know that when travel 
has become a memory all the richness of it rises 
to the surface, like cream. 



XX. 

DOWN THE STREAM. 

Dahabeah Nitetis, on the Nile. 
When we returned from the enchanted isl- 
and we found the Nitetis transformed and fully 
equipped for the down voyage. All the trap-doors 
in the main deck had disappeared, leaving seven 
small, open graves, about three feet deep, on each 
side of the ship. These graves were peopled by the 
fourteen able-bodied oarsmen whose lives for the 
next month or six weeks were to be devoted to 
rising like so many ghosts out of their respective 
mummy pits with an immense oar in their hands, 
and then sinking backward almost out of sight, 
making frantic efforts to tear up the bottom of the 
river with their oars, and all heaving a huge sigh 
in chorus when they discovered that they had 
failed in so doing, and must try it over again. 
They were to have fitful interludes of song — how 
familiar I have grown with these refrains ! — full of 
melancholy and very often exquisitely poetical. 
Some one, usually the best singer in the crew, 
suddenly lifts his voice like a lark, and, having 
poised himself securely on one long, plaintive 



DOWN THE STREAM. 205 

note, he improvises a single sentence, a sentiment 
suggested by the passing bird, the cloud in the 
west, or a more fanciful subject evolved from the 
depths of a hasheesh dream. At the end of his brief 
improvisation his voice begins to quiver, and then 
it drops and rises again, it turns and soars about 
and finally flutters dizzily to earth like a tum- 
bling pigeon, and is buried in the breast of the 
singer, who sinks with a gasp into his particular 
grave. All the crew cry " Ah " in a simultaneous 
burst of enthusiasm, and then there is silence for a 
moment, broken only by the measured stroke of 
the oars — a stroke, by the by, that consists of a 
long sweep toward the bow of the barge, a plunge, 
three desperate lunges under water, each of which 
causes the barge to lean forward as if it were 
about to get up on its rudder and walk off ; then 
comes the flight of the oars, the swash of the 
water, and the deep sigh of the oarsman, who is 
equal to this sort of thing six or eight hours on 
the stretch. 

Our galley slaves, the merriest, most contented, 
and best natured fellows in the world, usually row 
a couple of hours, and then lie by, if it be in the 
heat of the day. At night they are less sparing 
of their strength. Again and again I have wa- 
kened in the dark or the moonlight, when the Nile 
was like a river of death, it was so silent and so 
full of mystery, and the fragmentary sailor-song 
stole into the edge of my dream like a serenade. 



206 MASHALLAH ! 

Sometimes the chief singer seems to be singing to 
himself. He puts his thought into the vaguest 
melody, as, for instance, one evening, when we 
were all silently relishing the silence, he threw 
back his head and cried, joyfully, "0 Night! 
Night ! Night ! " and then the chorus cried 
"Ah!" with the utmost satisfaction. There 
is often a deep, a very deep, melancholy in these 
fragments of song, the same melancholy that sub- 
dues their laughter and makes every action of their 
life gentle and almost feminine. The singer cried 
one day, as a stork swam through the air, "Who 
shall say of the two birds that passed us yesterday 
if they be living or dead ? " and again, pulling 
through a superb twilight toward a moonrise that 
was already flooding the east with splendor, some 
son of Adam cried out in a delicious voice : " Oh ! 
thou, who knowest that I love thee, leave me 
alone ; leave me alone ! " The burst of satisfac- 
tion that followed this complaint of a lover over 
lover seemed to imply that these followers of the 
Prophet have taken the edge off their desire 
through their knowledge of this earthly paradise. 
Once he sang : " Oh, bird flying swiftly over, bear 
this message to my beloved ; and you, oh, maiden, 
sitting by the window in the high palace, do thou 
receive it for her." And yet again, growing warm 
with date wine, passed from lip to lip, refreshing 
the oarsmen, "When I love thee thy bosom is the 
witness ; and when I kiss thee I devour thy lips ! " 



DOWN THE STREAM. 207 

Meanwhile we were borne onward by the 
strong current of the stream, were caught again 
and again in the tremendous eddies, and whirled 
round and round so that it was at times quite 
difficult to say which way lay our course. Some- 
times we drifted rapidly toward the shore, and 
then the sailors fell upon their oars and pulled 
us out into mid-stream, and we went backing 
down the river awkwardly or swung broadside 
upon a shoal, where we stuck fast for an hour 
or two, with all the tide pushing hard against 
us, until it finally pushed us clean over the bar, 
and we floated free on the other side. This sort 
of thing began at Assooan, very early in the 
morning, while the town still slept in a tran- 
quil haze of palms and mimosas, and one slender 
minaret in the edge of the grove was tipped with 
the first rays of the sun. The smoke floated up 
from the barbaric camp-fires on the beach ; the 
yellow sand hills began to sparkle in the morning 
light — I have a whole peck of that fine Nubian 
gold, more beautiful than any rock dust I have 
ever seen elsewhere — and from that hour the voy- 
age was one long reverie, interrupted only when 
we paused to revisit some temple we specially 
loved, or made brief excursions to vary the delight- 
ful monotony of our daily life. All the way down 
stream there was one picture that haunted us — a 
reminiscence of Assooan — that will be the last to 
fade in our memories of the Nile. It was the deck 



208 MASHALLAII ! 

of the Nitetis, with the awning spread above it, 
and the sailors lounging about in luxurious idle- 
ness. In the center of the group stood a young 
Berber, a bronze Apollo, toying with an immense 
ostrich egg. It would have been difficult to pro- 
nounce upon the sex of this youthful savage, had 
we judged only from his physical beauty. The 
haughty loveliness of Lucifer was stamped upon 
his features ; eyes full of fire ; passionate, scornful 
lips ; the nose small and regularly formed ; the 
jet-black hair tufted over the forehead and thrown 
back behind the ears, where it fell in rich masses 
between the shoulders. A long needle of wood 
was thrust through it. On his arm he wore a 
huge shield made of hippopotamus hide, and above 
his elbow was strapped the villainous-looking knife 
which the majority of these people carry in the 
same fashion. Our old rais would gladly have 
purchased this splendid fellow, and would have 
profited largely by him, had he been able to do so, 
for there is a fine market in Cairo, and we have 
passed several boat-loads of Nubian slaves bound 
for that port ; but his overtures were treated with 
silent contempt by the hideous old man who fol- 
lowed the boy about and played to him on a three- 
stringed lute that gave forth less melody than a 
jewsharp. All the Berber wanted of us was a 
rather extravagant backsheesh for his ostrich egg, 
and this he ultimately pocketed in a corner of his 
single garment, a yard of coarse white cotton 



DOWN THE STREAM. 209 

thrown over one shoulder and tucked in under the 
elbow, where it was secured in a double knot. 
That egg, which had to be opened with a gimlet 
and poured out in a pan, contained meat equal to 
fiye-and-twenty hen's eggs. 

All the way back to Cairo we magnify the 
smallest episodes and enjoy life like children. 
The monkey has grown used to sailing, and, 
when he is turned loose toward evening, it is 
his chief joy to drive the native crew to the 
verge of madness by attacking them on the 
naked calves. When fate turns against him, he 
flies between decks in a state of frenzy, and is at 
last captured in his desperate attempt to scuttle 
the ship. As for the piano, its strings have be- 
come flabby and weak. Three of the notes are 
utterly mute, but, as there is a fourth note that of 
itself sounds a pronounced discord, the results are 
equalized. We are thinning out the library and 
growing hard to suit in these last days. Oddly 
enough, certain volumes of the delightful Tauch- 
nitz edition, which we loaned to a downward- 
bound boat when we were sailing up stream, have 
just come home to us from a third barge, which 
we have met on our way down. The dahabeahs 
exchange salutes, visits, late newspapers, novels, 
and certain table luxuries in the most friendly 
manner conceivable. Only the other day, as we 
came to shore in the dark, we were received with 
a flight of seven rockets and a broadside of Bengal- 
14 



210 MASHALLAH ! 

lights by the mysterious barge that has haunted 
us for two or three weeks, appearing and disap- 
pearing beyond sudden bends in the river, chasing 
us by night, giving us the slip by day, and all 
this time shrouding itself in a mystery worthy of 
the good old privateering days. On one occasion 
we fancied we had surprised our phantom friends 
as we stole up to a handsome dahabeah, ashore 
under a starlit palm grove, and we made a national 
affair of it — our friends being English — by sudden- 
ly touching ourselves off, pyrotechnically speak- 
ing, in a style worthy of Independence evening. 
Too late we discovered that we had been glorifying 
the annual passage of a great merchantman, the 
proprietor of which returned our salute with the 
immediate discharge of fire-crackers and three 
squibs, and afterward presented himself in person 
to offer those profuse thanks peculiar to the mag- 
nificent East. 

Meanwhile our private journals are growing 
ponderous, and reluctantly we see them draw- 
ing to a close. Probably not half the little 
affairs of Nile life have been recorded : again 
and again they recur to me, suggested by a note 
of music, an odor, a touch of color ; the indelible 
association transports me in a moment, and the 
great mystical, eternal flood of the mighty river 
pours into my soul, and at such times I scorn any- 
thing so modern as Eome I Indeed, the affairs of 
the last twenty centuries seem rather youngish* 



DOWN THE STREAM. 211 

This is one of the inevitable and rather ridiculous 
results of a Nile cruise, but it is a fact. When 
this letter has spun itself out and my pen has trav- 
eled over into Palestine and beyond, I know that 
a thousand little incidents will come to the sur- 
face, and when it is too late to write of them how 
I shall deplore their fate. I remember the day we 
drifted up to the high shore of Neggadeh. We 
had been steeped in silence for some weeks. All 
Egypt is silent ; the human voice dies unechoed 
in its warm, dry air ; the very birds are mostly 
mute, and our ears, that have been trained in the 
noisy schools of the younger world, begin to ache 
for some familiar sound. Under the high shore 
of Neggadeh we sat at dinner on deck, when sud- 
denly out of the air fell the round, full notes of a 
bell. It was like some angelic message from the 
skies. It summoned a flood of recollections that 
brought the dew to the eyes of some of us. It 
seemed to me the sweetest, the most delicious, the 
most luscious, ravishing music that ever fell upon 
my ears. It was a physical luxury to listen to the 
melodious pealing of that bell. I had not heard 
one since the bells of Malta rang out over the sea, 
ages before ; and when its music ceased Egypt 
was more silent than ever, and I ran up into the 
fig-sheltered cloister of the little chapel to thank 
the old Franciscan monk for a benediction that 
was heaven-sent. 

There are sounds in Egypt ; the donkey, for 



212 MASHALLAH ! 

instance, is not silent ; the sakia snores in a 
summer sleep ; the frogs of the Orient are dou- 
ble-bass-prof undos, and all the Nile bank through 
Upper Egypt is lined with the swinging, the 
complaining, sweep of the shadoofs. The long 
sweep of the shadoof has a pendulum at the top 
with a leathern bucket attached, a huge ball of 
clay at the bottom to balance it, and is lashed to 
an axle that turns in the ungreased crotches of 
two posts. The drawers of water stand under the 
pendulum, draw down the leathern bucket, fill it, 
and then swing it over their shoulders into a small 
reservoir sunk in the bank about as high as their 
heads. Two, three, even four of these shadoofs, 
one above another, are sometimes necessary to 
carry a current of Nile water into the canals that 
feed the broad corn-fields of Egypt. From day- 
break till long after dusk these primitive elevators 
swing up and down. They are often so near to- 
gether along the front of some extensive field that 
you can see twenty of them at one glance, all dip- 
ping and rising at regular intervals, and all creak- 
ing plaintively and painfully in the melancholy 
chorus of laborious toil. The slaves who work 
them relieve one another from time to time. Those 
who are at rest lie on the bank in the fierce glare 
of the sun, as close to the earth and as fond of 
that hot bed as sleepy lizards. The toilers, most 
of them young fellows, and the majority of them 
quite naked, throw up their brown arms to drag 



DOWN THE STREAM. 213 

down the empty bucket, stoop low to the water, 
and then swing back their burden with a regular 
and powerful movement that has brought their 
naturally fine physiques well nigh to that perfec- 
tion the Greeks alone have immortalized. 

From time to time, as the heat of the day 
increases, and the hours seem to lengthen, these 
patient toilers lift up their voices in a wail that 
might compel the pity of the gods. Again and 
again I sought to search out its meaning with 
the aid of native interpreters, but it was not 
easy to catch their words, though the wail rang 
over the waters like the cry of a lost soul. It 
was the prayer for deliverance out of a bond- 
age that has been their doom from the begin- 
ning of time. It was the irrepressible sob of 
hearts broken with ceaseless and degrading toil. 
It was a pathetic plea for rest and refreshment 
and sleep. There were hunger and thirst in it ; 
there were misery and despair in it ; there were 
a fainting spirit and flagging strength, coupled 
with patience almost superhuman and long- 
suffering such as not many are able to endure. 
But throughout the length and the breadth of 
the land there was not, and is not, and never can 
be, a shadow of hope in it. These accursed slaves 
endure all things because there is but one avenue 
of escape — the long grave of the Nile ! Many of 
them seek it, stricken down in their youth ; many 
of them are driven to it that they may escape a 



214 MASHALLAH ! 

fate even more horrible, and that is being seized 
in the open day and dragged in chains to Cairo (I 
myself have seen this spectacle in the streets of 
Cairo), there to be sent to the war in Abyssinia or 
Herzegovina and butchered by the enemy, or 
starved by their own infamous rulers. If the ear 
of the Almighty is not deaf to the cry of suffering, 
the lamentations of this people should draw down 
upon the land those plagues of old, seven times 
magnified. Stoicism or fatalism is the salvation 
of the Egyptian. 

I remember the day we were rushing up against 
the stream, our sails straining in the wind, the 
water foaming under our bow, when we sighted a 
returning barge drifting round and round, and 
making little or no headway between the con- 
tending wind and tide. Our venerable rais at 
once recognized the craft as the one on which his 
two sons had set sail five months before. "We ap- 
proached it ; all parties were on deck, for it is 
pleasant to touch your hat or dip colors to a pass- 
ing boat, though you are not always in the mood 
to carry civility beyond this perfectly safe point. 
The little son of the rais, the pet of the Nitetis, 
stood by his father as we drew near the down- 
ward-bound craft, and for the moment in which 
we were within hailing distance the crews of the 
two boats kept up a storm of salutations that 
rendered every voice unintelligible. Close to us, 
almost within reach, the two sons of our rais 



DOWN THE STREAM. 215 

leaned eagerly from the outer rail of their daha- 
beah and kissed their hands to the old man. In 
a few moments they were out of hearing, but so 
long as a human figure was distinguishable we 
saw these handsome lads clinging to the rail and 
watching us out of sight. Their faces had looked 
unutterable love as we swept by them, and our 
little disappointed Aboolaila curled up on the 
deck and wept bitterly for two hours. But the 
old rais stood like a statue as his boys were borne 
away from him, and then he turned to watch the 
long lone shore and the palm groves and the 
weather, and assumed to have been in no wise 
disconcerted ; but the eyes of the old man were 
dimmed with tears, and that evening, when the 
sun set gloriously, he spread his carpet on the 
quarter-deck and turned a sad face to Mecca, and 
I know for certain that his prayers were longer 
than common. 

My crocodile ? Was there ever a Nile cruiser 
without his shot at the ugly beast ? The fussy 
little steamers have robbed the river of very much 
of its poetry ; so have the half dozen sugar mills 
and the two or three steam pumps, but the croco- 
dile has emigrated to Nubia, and there for the 
present he suns himself and receives the bullets 
of the British sportsmen as if they were so many 
gooseberries. If you would see my crocodile, you 
must drop into the bazaar of Assooan and inquire 
for the only mummy on the premises. He is 



216 MASHALLAH! 

about ten feet long, with the hollowest of stom- 
achs, and looks as if he were shingled with old 
shoe leather. I could have dropped him on the 
wing with a one-hundred-franc note ; but ostrich 
eggs, Nubian girdles, amulets from the tombs of 
the kings — that sort of thing likes me better. In 
the spirit of that fox who was rather particular as 
to his diet, and said as much on a certain occa- 
sion, your stuffed crocodile is a bore. But we 
did capture one of those extraordinary birds that 
walk into the mouth of the crocodile when he 
sleeps with his jaw up, and there plucks the 
plump leech from his tongue. This coal-black 
bird has the eyes of an angel, but its wings were 
the wings of the devil, with sharp horns thrust out 
from the first joint. 

We have come back within sound of the rail- 
way traffic and within sight of the rushing cloud 
of smoke that hurries daily to Cairo. Some of 
my companions are impatient to begin expe- 
riences in Palestine, and off they go by train 
from one of the several stations near the river 
bank. I stay to the end, the bitter end ; the 
only unwelcome experience in the whole cruise. 
For two days we tarry under a protecting palm 
grove within twenty miles of Cairo, beaten back 
by the unwilling winds. I bless every breath 
that prolongs the voyage, though the air is dark 
with sand-clouds and my flesh prickles with the 
withering heat of the khamdseen. If we could 



THE MOOLID OF THE PROPHET. 217 

have rounded a single point, we might have 
rushed on to the port of Boulak, and in three 
hours or less time have been disporting ourselves 
in the luxurious life of the metropolis. We did it 
later ; but when we did it I knew that the most 
unique, the most beguiling, the most profitable 
experience of my life had rounded to a close, and 
with a heavy heart, and a headache, and a gen- 
eral depression, spiritual, mental, and physical, I 
bade adieu to my good friends one and all, and 
turned my back on the dear old Nitetis, my home 
for two of the very happiest months I ever hope 
to pass. But there is a consolation in the thought 
that the remembrance of this voyage must be a 
joy to me for ever and a day. 



XXI. 

THE MOOLID OF THE PROPHET. 

The April heat was increasing in Grand Cairo. 
Under its enervating influence I subsided into a 
hasheesh frame of mind, and passed my time be- 
tween the bath and the nargileh, the victim of 
brief and fitful moods. 

Suddenly all Cairo began talking of the Prophet 
and his Moolid. It is the birthnight festival of 
Islamism, the nativity of Mahomet, the chief fete 
of the Oriental year. Of course I was shaken like 



218 MASHALLAH ! 

an aspen at the prospect : the bath and the bub- 
bling pipe were forgotten ; I thought only of the 
Zikrs or the dervish ceremonials, and of the Zik- 
keers, those bedraggled, petticoated fellows, with 
their tall, brimless felt hats that resemble inverted 
flower-pots. The thought recalled to my mind a 
certain solitary pilgrimage to a convent mosque, 
where the dervishes passed out of their dusty 
cloister into a two-galleried rotunda — a solemn 
procession of meditative souls that speedily scat- 
tered and began spinning like so many tops. 

Again I heard weird music ; the thin, hoarse 
voice of a flute rose beyond a choir-screen of fret- 
ted gold. The husky throat of that melodious 
instrument seemed to choke at first, and the voice 
stopped short, checked in the middle of a note. 
It bubbled, gathered force and strength, and then 
poured forth such a rich, clear, prolonged volume 
of sound as startled us all into breathless silence. 
It was like an uninterrupted moonbeam, that 
long, delicious note. The minstrel took heart, 
and played marvelously. There was soul in his 
breath, and inspiration in his touch ; there was 
madness in the theme which he embroidered with 
a thousand fanciful patterns, after the manner of 
the East. He knew his art when he laid that 
reed to his lips and trailed a melody through 
the whole range of harmony, giving it as much 
warmth and color as if it were spun out of the 
seven-toned shadow of a prism. It was impossi- 



THE MOOLID OF THE PROPHET. 219 

ble to follow the theme of the cunning flutist ; as 
soon hope to track a swallow in the dusk. It 
appeared and disappeared ; it soared in ecstatic 
upward curves ; it quivered in rapturous suspense ; 
it sank in passionate sighs but half expressed, half 
inexpressible ; it darted hither and thither in sud- 
den delirium, a golden maze of melody; then, 
with a piercing cry that pricked the heart of the 
listener, it floated down through space, a broken, 
trembling, fine-drawn silver thread, lighter than 
gossamer, softer than carded silk. I listened pain- 
fully, but the angelic voice had faded like the 
moonbeam ; yet still I listened, though the si- 
lence that followed was breathless and profound. 

Meanwhile the Zikkeers passed within the 
charmed circle under the rotunda ; made, each in 
his turn, a reverential salaam to the sheik, who 
was seated cross-legged on his mat at one side of 
the circle. Music again reverberated from the 
screened choir — a concord of sounds not over- 
sweet, and certainly less interesting than was the 
more spiritual invocation. 

Gradually the Zikkeers began slowly turning, 
one after another, and scattering themselves over 
the arena, which they filled. There was room 
enough for all to turn in, to extend their arms 
freely, to expand their skirts like tents. When 
by chance two skirts came in contact, each col- 
lapsed immediately and clung for a moment to 
the slim body of the Zikkeer before it was again 



220 MASHALLAH ! 

inflated. Some of the Zikkeers, turning slowly, 
made the circuit of the arena. Some whirled in 
one spot, never raising their left heel from the 
floor, but paddling with their right foot contin- 
ually, and spinning, each on its own pivot, for a 
good half hour. 

Most of these dervishes were grim, mean-eyed, 
filthy men, past the prime of life. There was but 
one in the score who showed any enthusiasm, any 
sentiment, or indeed much interest in the religi- 
ous diversions of the hour. The others were me- 
chanical spinners, spinning from long habit, and 
with never so much as a glimmer of expression 
lighting even for a moment their utterly blank 
faces. But that one, that lad in his teens, soft- 
eyed, oval-faced, touched with color that went 
and came like a girl's blush — how he whirled, 
with his outstretched arms floating upon the air ! 
His head was inclined as if pillowed upon some 
invisible breast ; his soft, dark eyes dilated in ec- 
stasy ; he swam like a thistle-down, superior to the 
gravitations of this base world, ascending in his 
dream, by airy spirals, into the seventh heaven of 
his soul's desire. What wonder that his heart 
melted within him ; that his spirit swooned, over- 
come by the surpassing loveliness of the mysteries 
now visible to him ! Are there not promised to 
the meanest in that paradise eighty thousand ser- 
vants in the perennial beauty of youth, and num- 
berless wives of the fairest daughters of paradise, 



THE MOOLID OF THE PROPHET. 221 

and a pavilion of emeralds, jacinths, and pearls ? 
Shall he not eat of three hundred dishes served 
on platters of bright gold, and drink of wine that 
inebriateth not ? And to him the last morsel and 
the last drop shall be as grateful as the first ! 

How the brain reels with watching those whirl- 
ing dervishes ! How the ears ache with the mu- 
sic that grows wilder and shriller every moment ! 
The throb of the first-beaten tar gives ryhthmical 
precision to the waltz, and it goes on and on till 
the eye of the spectator turns away for rest, and 
his feet instinctively lead him to the threshold of 
the rotunda, where a livid-lipped eunuch squats 
in the sun, knitting. You would think that the 
bees had stung those lips, and that the poor 
wretch was still writhing with pain. He is irri- 
table ; he snaps at a child who annoys him — snaps 
like an ill-tempered dog — and in a final fury stabs 
the youngster with his needles, and goes his way 
snarling. 

All this came to me, instead of the repose I 
was seeking in the deep divans in my chambers ; 
but my reverie was cut short, none too soon, by 
the arrival of the friends who were to escort me 
to the Moolid. We dined in the best of humors, 
and with as little delay as possible we girded on 
our armor and went forth to El Ezlekeeyeh, while 
the whole city was astir and the air shook with 
the subdued thunder of the glib-tongued popu- 
lace. 



222 MASHALLAH ! 

A strong tide set in toward the field of the fes- 
tival. We flung ourselves into the midst of it, 
and were speedily borne toward a bit of desert 
that blossomed for the time being under the spell 
of the Prophet. We passed in to the feast of lan- 
terns. In the center of the field stood a tall staff 
ringed with flickering lamps ; chains of many-col- 
ored lamps swung from the peak of the central 
staff to a circle of lesser staffs ; festoons of painted 
lanterns made the circuit of El Ezlekeeyeh, and 
flooded that part of the city with the soft glow of 
a perpetual twilight. A series of richly decorated 
tents marked the boundary of the festival ; each 
tent open to the arena and thronged with Zik- 
keers, both whirlers and howlers, performing their 
gymnastics in the name of the Prophet. 

Swept, as we were, into the arena, along with 
some thousands of Mohammedans, whose fervor 
is at white heat during all the Moolid, it behooved 
us to accept, with so-called Christian resignation, 
whatever insults might be showered upon us. 
The seller of sweetmeats cried at the top of his 
voice, " A grain of salt in the eye of him who 
doth not bless the Prophet ! " The dispenser of 
coffee dregs demanded thrice his legitimate fee. 
We were rudely elbowed and trod upon, and 
stared at by eyes grown suddenly uncharitable — 
eyes that shot dark flames at us from between lids 
blackened with bands of kohl. 

We saw it all : the pavilions hung with prayer 



THE MOOLID OF THE PROPHET. 223 

carpets that had swept the holy dust of Mecca 
and Medina ; the splendid lanterns ; the groups 
of dervishes who had been fasting and praying for 
a whole week, and whose brains were fast addling. 
Many of the devotees were lads, brought hither 
by their relations who had been through this 
school of fanaticism, who had run the awful risks 
of the Doseh, and survived to encourage these in- 
nocents to make their crowning sacrifice. 

Several of the small pavilions were set apart 
for the howling dervishes, whom we found stand- 
ing in semicircles before their respective sheiks, 
the masters of ceremonies. The howlers bowed 
in concert, almost touching their foreheads to 
the earth ; their long straight hair fell forward in 
a cascade, and swept the carpet on which they 
stood. Then rising suddenly and throwing back 
their heads, while their hair was switched through 
the air like horse-tails, they cried " Ya Allah!" 
with hoarse voices that seemed to shoot from hol- 
low stomachs starved for seven days past. How 
they barked in chorus, the delirious creatures ! 
How they rocked in the air and waved their elec- 
trical locks with such vigor that the lanterns 
swung again, and the tent bulged with tempestu- 
ous currents stirred to fury in the fervor of those 
prayers ! All night El Ezlekeeyeh resounded to the 
reiterated name of God. All night the pensive 
whirlers, poised on one heel, waltzed into paradise 
to the beguiling clatter of barbaric instruments. 



224 MASHALLAH ! 

Somewhat removed from the solemnities of 
the Moolid, the populace found every sort of di- 
version — strolling players, improvisators, sooth- 
sayers, snake-charmers, and the Oriental Punch 
and Judy. High swings cut the air, laden with 
shrieking Arabs, and when the rope struck a chain 
of bells that clanged noisily, the jingle of that 
high jubilee drowned for a moment the terrestrial 
hubbub. 

It was agreed that E and I were to join 

the Austrian Consul at his residence on the day 
following, and accompany him to the Doseh. We 
went thither at an early hour. Dazzling ladies 
were there in Eastern raiment, with scarlet fezes 
on their heads. It is so easy and so natural to 
assume Oriental habits in the East. Gentlemen 
took coffee and the nargilehs in the drawing-room. 
We were beguiled with music and small talk until 
toward noon, when we drove to El Ezlekeeyeh. 
All Cairo had gathered to witness the most aston- 
ishing religious spectacle of El Islam. It was 
with the utmost difficulty that we drew near the 
site of the Doseh. So dense was the throng al- 
ready assembled that long before we reached El 
Ezlekeeyeh we were obliged to descend and follow 
the kawas on foot, in single file, working our way 
by slow degrees into an avenue kept open by the 
persistent efforts of the military. One side of the 
open way was lined with tents gorgeously fur- 
nished and set apart for the accommodation of 



THE MOOLID OF THE PROPHET. 225 

numerous officials, both foreign and domestic, 
who had been ceremoniously invited to witness 
the Doseh or "treading." Owing to some blun- 
der of our kawas, we were ushered into the wrong 
tent, where we made ourselves quite at ease among 
the sumptuous divans that lined it on three sides. 

The harem was present, under glass as usual. 
Beautiful Circassian and Georgian women sat in 
their English broughams, and were driven to and 
fro before the tents. They eyed us with marvel- 
ous eyes. They turned again to regard us, with a 
surprise heightened by much kohl ; their glances 
were underlined, as it were. Who would have 
thought a houri capable of such worldly curiosity? 
Then it was made clear to us that there was an 
error somewhere, for at that moment a fleshy 
young man entered with a retinue of wise men of 
the East, and greeted us with a distant civility 
that smacked of Oxford. It was the hereditary 
prince ! No wonder our lady friends fluttered 
the harem, while, all unconscious, they sat in the 
pavilion of his Highness. 

Our tent was close at hand ; we sought it with 
the nonchalance of travelers who rather enjoy 
breaking the tables of the law. We were glad of 
the escape and of the occasion of it ; likewise 
grateful for the slight shelter our tent afforded, 
for by this time El Ezlekeeyeh was shrouded in a 
fine, sifting rain that sparkled in the sunshine as 
the golden light shot through it. Music (plenty 
15 



226 MASHALLAH ! 

of it), growing louder and more loud, and the roar 
of ten thousand voices swept down upon us, and 
then the rush of heralds crying, "Make way, 
make way ! " and the dervishes thus announced 
advanced to offer up their bodies to the Doseh. 
They hastened up the avenue in groups ; each 
group was clustered about a staff decorated with 
holy rags and saints' relics. All faces were turned 
toward the relics — the haggard faces of the der- 
vishes, who hung together with arms entwined, 
compact as swarming bees ; sacred banners flut- 
tered down the whole length of a procession made 
up of these grouped dervishes. Not one of the 
victims seemed in his right mind ; the majority 
of them were idiotic. Their swollen tongues 
lolled from their mouths ; their heads wagged 
wearily on their shoulders, and their eyes were 
either closed, or fixed and staring. Many of them 
were naked to the waist, turbanless, barefooted, 
and barelegged to the knee. In fact, they were 
of the lowest orders of the East, impoverished, 
fanatical, forlorn. They hastened to the top of 
the avenue, a part of those in each group running 
backward. When they had assembled to the 
number of four hundred, the friends who accom- 
panied them separated each cluster of dervishes, 
and began paving the way with their bodies. 
They lay face down in the dust, the arms crossed 
under the forehead ; they were ranged shoulder 
to shoulder, hip to hip, though the heads were 



THE MOOLID OF THE PROPHET. 227 

not always turned in the same direction, but were 
occasionally reversed. Friends gathered at the 
head of each of the dervishes, and with the vo- 
luminous breadths of their garments fanned the 
prostrate forms rapidly and incessantly. In truth, 
the dervishes seemed fainting with hunger and 
fatigue, and, as the crowd pressed close upon 
them, they would doubtless have become insensi- 
ble in a short time but for the fitful breath af- 
forded by those flapping sails. 

I observed that the majority of the dsrvishes 
lay as still as death ; but there were those who 
raised their heads and looked wildly about until 
their friends had quieted them, or, as in some 
cases, had forced them to lie still, while the con- 
fusion increased, and the intense excitement at 
the lower end of the avenue announced the ap- 
proach of the sheik. 

A few footmen then ran rapidly over the pros- 
trate bodies, beating small copper drums of a hemi- 
spherical form, and crying in a loud voice, "Al- 
lah ! " The attendants, as they saw the sheik's 
great turban nodding above the crowd, grew 
nervous, and some of them lost all self-control ; 
one man standing close beside me went stark mad, 
and three muscular fellows had some difficulty in 
dragging him away from the spot. 

He came, the sheik of the saadeeyeh, swathed 
in purple and fine linen, and mounted upon a 
gray steed. The bridle was in the hands of two 



228 MASHALLAH ! 

attendants ; two others leaned upon the hind 
quarters of the animal to support his unsteady 
steps. The horse was shod with large, flat shoes, 
like plates of steel, that flashed in the sunshine ; 
he stepped cautiously and with some hesitation 
upon the bodies, usually placing his foot upon the 
hips or thighs of the dervishes ; sometimes the 
steel-shod hoof slipped down the ribs of a man, 
or sank in between the thighs, for in no case could 
it touch the earth, so closely were the bodies 
ranged side by side. 

If any shriek of agony escaped from the lips 
of the dervishes I heard it not, for the air was 
continually rent with the cry of " Alldh-ld-ld-ld- 
Idh," the rippling prayer, a breath long, continu- 
ally, reiterated. 

The sheik was stupefied with opium, for he 
performs this act, much against his will, in defer- 
ence to the demands of the people ; he rocked in 
his saddle until he had passed the whole length of 
that avenue paved with human flesh, and then 
withdrew into a tent prepared for his reception, 
where he received the devoted homage of such as 
were able to force their way into his presence. 

No sooner was he past than the dervishes 
began to rise ; some of them sprang to their feet 
unaided, and seemed to have suffered nothing 
more serious than a narrow escape ; some rose to 
their knees, and looked about in a half trance ; a 
few lay quite still until their friends had assisted 



THE MOOLID OF THE PROPHET. 229 

them to rise, when they were embraced rapturously 
and led away in triumph. But there were those 
who were perfectly rigid, who showed no sign of 
life when they were raised in the arms of the by- 
standers ; and there were those who writhed in 
horrible convulsions, whose clutched hands beat 
the air in dumb agony. One, who lay with his 
head at my feet, was stiff as a statue ; his face 
was emerald-green, his eyes buried in his brain. 
Four men bore him away on their shoulders, 
but his condition attracted no special notice ; in- 
deed, we were almost immediately whirled into a 
human maelstrom, out of which we were only too 
grateful to extricate ourselves with whole mem- 
bers. 

Each dervish is entitled to two horsehairs 
from the sheik's horse, one from the fore-leg and 
one from the hind-leg ; those who are injured 
during the Doseh are thought saintly according 
to the extent of the damage received. The others 
— there is a superstitious belief that no one is per- 
manently maimed — are scarcely congratulated ; 
the seal of the Prophet is not on them ; they may 
return to the world and the flesh, as we did, with 
nothing in remembrance of the Moolid but a f aint- 
ness and nausea that embittered the next three 
hours. . . . 

It was the night of the Moolid. The minarets 
were girdled with flame ; the heavens flushed 
with unnamed constellations, the trophies of the 



230 MASHALLAH ! 

Prophet's birthnight. Once more I threaded the 
narrow streets, and saw the fruit-sellers sleeping 
on bamboo litters in the mouths of their bazaars, 
with only a net thrown over their wares to pro- 
tect them from thievish hands. I saw mysterious 
forms passing like sheeted ghosts, wrapped in pro- 
foundest mystery. I see them now ; I mark the 
wild music that floats from chambers high up and 
out of reach ; a flame twinkles in the lattice, and 
light laughter greets the ear as I steal away from 
the shadows that lie under the eaves of the 
daughters of death — steal away into the solitude 
of the desert toward the north, for I am a pilgrim 
and stranger, and the end is not yet. 



THE END, 



The Story of an Honest Man. 



By ED310ND ABOUT. 



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